Print Chat Logs Background (To PDF) no longer works

Note: This is a repost as I never got around to doing as I was asked. Well, now I did. :) It used to be that you could simply set the option in the browser to print the background elements (i.e. normal character speak vs /me does an action), which makes reading a PDF easier since it reflects the in-game look. This seems to no longer work, and a few tricks I found online for inserting code into the HTML doesn't work either. Is anyone aware of this issue and/or how to fix it? While I could simply save to HTML, that doesn't allow me to combine PDFs so I have a master document that is searchable. So that's not a viable solution as I can't index it as I can in Adobe Acrobat to make searching through hundreds of pages faster. I tried to use multiple browsers, it makes no difference. This includes Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. I tried to use Internet Exploder for shits and giggles but it doesn't work with this site, unsurprisingly. I also tried making a completely new game with just myself, posted some whispers and so forth, still no background will print with background graphics selected. Sidenote: My players also have an interesting issue, but it seems to be an issue specific to one game. They can't see any whispers from other player characters in the chatlog history, but it works as long as those whispers aren't too far back. It doesn't matter who they're from, messages don't work if directed at a character but it does work for messages done OOC. I have tested this issue as well in new games with games I've created and a player created game, and the problem is not there. This issue persists through the copy of the game made with chatlogs cleared out. So I'm not sure what to make of this or what else I could do to verify this issue.

Hi Wade S. Can you provide a little more detail that I can forward to the devs? Include step-by-step instructions of how the action was done before, the expected behavior, and the actual behavior would be useful. Thanks!

Whispers to other characters do not appear in the Chat Log, as far as I'm aware. This came up recently in another thread. Some ideas I'm not in a position to check, but I'll throw them out. Formatting in the chatlog is likely controlled by an external CSS file. You might be able to find that by examining the HTML. Does any browser you use have the ability to save as a webarchive? As for saving to PDF I use the Macintosh for my desktop computer, and there it's simply a matter of printing to PDF. Is there nothing similar on your platform?

Baldur's Great said: Hi Wade S. Can you provide a little more detail that I can forward to the devs? Include step-by-step instructions of how the action was done before, the expected behavior, and the actual behavior would be useful. Thanks! Sorry I haven't responded sooner, been busy. The action that was done before to print to PDF is the same as it is now. Using whatever web browser's menu options to get to a print preview dialogue. Load up existing Roll20 game. Click "View all chat entries for this game »" and wait for it to load. In Firefox, either click the three bars in the upper right and go to Print (which brings up a print preview menu) or if the Menu bar is available, go to File, Print Preview. Under "Page Setup..." the "Print Background (colors &amp; images) option is already selected (but background coloration for different text types do not appear in the print preview where as before they used to). Trying to print via any available PDF Printing Software has not worked, using Chrome's built in PDF printer (Save as PDF) or any of the others listed below. I've even recently tried again to verify that it is still not working. I attempted to use CutePDF, AdobePDF, and PDFCreator in Firefox. Chrome's built in PDF printer. I even used Edge and "Microsoft Print to PDF" (though it froze up with my chat logs being something like 696 pages and never loaded up even after waiting 10 minutes... it usually loads up by then in my experience as I was testing it on other browsers). And Edge didn't show the background either. But then again there was no option to print background graphics that I could find.&nbsp; Windows 10 Pro, x64 bit, 1809 (OS Build 17763.379), Intel Core i7-6800K @ 3.4 GHz, 64 GB RAM, SSD &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Firefox v66.0.2 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Chrome Version 73.0.3683.86 (Official Build) (64-bit) &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Microsoft Edge 44.17763.1.0 (Microsoft EdgeHTML 18.17763) CutePDF (Free) - <a href="http://www.cutepdf.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cutepdf.com/</a> PDFCreator (free) - <a href="https://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator" rel="nofollow">https://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator</a> AdobePDF Printer (trial based) - <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/print-to-pdf.html" rel="nofollow">https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/print-to-pdf.html</a> Google PDF Print (must use Chrome web browser) Microsoft's Print to PDF Feature (must be enabled in Windows Features, as noted on this help forum) - <a href="https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/where-can-i-get-microsoft-print-to-pdf/367f6ea3-64cd-4398-8f53-1da9029d8357" rel="nofollow">https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/where-can-i-get-microsoft-print-to-pdf/367f6ea3-64cd-4398-8f53-1da9029d8357</a>

keithcurtis said: Whispers to other characters do not appear in the Chat Log, as far as I'm aware. This came up recently in another thread. Some ideas I'm not in a position to check, but I'll throw them out. Formatting in the chatlog is likely controlled by an external CSS file. You might be able to find that by examining the HTML. Does any browser you use have the ability to save as a webarchive? As for saving to PDF I use the Macintosh for my desktop computer, and there it's simply a matter of printing to PDF. Is there nothing similar on your platform? There are some matters of doing so, but the built in PDF Printer from Microsoft is horrible and limited in options. I don't mind saving as a webarchive, but that prevents me from easily combining them into one large master chatlog to make it searchable. I've saved both in the past and will continue to do so, but I'm not sure I want to only have a copy of the web version if there's something wrong with the coding. Unfortunately I know little in the way of web programming, only basic HTML. I'm not familiar with CSS so I don't know that I'd be able to figure anything out with that either unfortunately. :(

Hello Wade S., Thank you for the information. Please note that printing is not a supported feature of Roll20. Printing is a feature of the browser and Operating System.&nbsp; As such, we suggest that you add the idea to our&nbsp; Suggestions &amp; Ideas forum . Thanks!

Dragon Dreamer said: Hello Wade S., Thank you for the information. Please note that printing is not a supported feature of Roll20. Printing is a feature of the browser and Operating System.&nbsp; As such, we suggest that you add the idea to our&nbsp; Suggestions &amp; Ideas forum . Thanks! Forgive me, but I'm confused as to why I've gotten two responses asking for more information (this post and my prior repost noted at the top) about the issue and one saying to ask for a feature. This is something that used to work already within Roll20 and changed, so it's not a new feature. I have old web archives saved for it and the corresponding PDFs that worked correctly when printing as well. I wouldn't mind keeping it as a long web page load but this makes the load times for the chat log take several minutes to load before roll20 unfreezes. Plus it's not as fast or searchable for bits of information.

Hello Wade S., The original response from&nbsp;Baldur's Great, a Roll20 moderator, was to inquire more about the issue you were having so that we could further understand your issue and provide you with the correct information. The other response from keithcurtis was a Forum Champion attempting to provide assistance as well.&nbsp; My response, based on the additional information provided, was to inform you that the Print function is based on the browser/OS and is not natively a Roll20 feature. As such, it is not something that Roll20 supports. You can find a similar printing request reported here .&nbsp; We understand your frustration with printing not working as desired. As such, we suggest posting it in the&nbsp;&nbsp; Suggestions &amp; Ideas forum &nbsp;to be able to shed further interest on this feature.&nbsp; We hope this information helps. If you have any additional questions, feel free to let us know. Thanks!

I think there's some cross-purpose communication going on here. Dragon Dreamer is correct in saying that saving to or printing from PDF is not supported. That being said, the behavior certainly may have changed recently. Anything you might have been depending on, you'll probably have to look upon as a "happy accident". The external chat log has always been a bit quirky. Some CSS is exported along with a web archive save, and some is not. Although I can save with images and some formatting, some formatting is lost. Save to PDF results give me mostly unformatted text. The long and tedious solution would be to save as a web archive, and edit the css files that get saved. I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a fork. (well, not really).I suspect that some formatting is provided by the sheet while in-game, but not in the chat archive. I tried a few workarounds, such as copying the page and pasting into a pdf document), but that gave me only text.