Printing Pages & PDFs
Knack includes a built-in print feature that lets you create printer-friendly versions of your pages — ideal for printing directly or saving as a PDF.
Enabling the Print Link
To add a print link to a page in your Live App:
- In the Next-Gen Builder, select the page from the page tree.
- Open the Settings tab for that page.
- Enable the "Show a link to print this page" option and save.
[Screenshot placeholder: Page Settings panel with "Show a link to print this page" toggle enabled]
Once enabled, a Print link will appear in the top-right corner of the page in your Live App.
[Screenshot placeholder: Live App page with Print link visible in top-right corner]
What Gets Printed
When a user clicks the Print link, Knack sends the page to the browser's default print dialog. Knack automatically removes the header, footer, and most navigation links to produce a cleaner printed output.
All views on the page are included in the print output. You can control what appears by editing those views directly — removing fields you don't need, adjusting column layouts, and hiding view titles.
Tip: Rich Text views are a great way to add static content to a print page — things like your company logo, a header, address, terms, or a thank-you message. Add as many as needed and arrange them by dragging in the Builder.
Images & Backgrounds
Browsers may suppress images and background colors/graphics by default in print mode. In Chrome, you can toggle this under More settings → Background graphics within the print dialog.
[Screenshot placeholder: Chrome print dialog with "Background graphics" option highlighted]
Note: If your page includes a Rating field, you must enable "Print backgrounds" for the rating stars to render correctly on the printed page. This option may appear under "Advanced printing settings" in your browser's print prompt.
Saving as a PDF
Most modern browsers support saving a print job as a PDF. In Chrome, select Save as PDF from the Destination dropdown in the print dialog. This is the most straightforward way to generate a PDF from a Knack page.
[Screenshot placeholder: Chrome print dialog showing "Save as PDF" selected as destination]
Limitations & Workarounds
No Page Break Control
Knack does not currently support controlling page breaks within a printed page. This means:
- A record in a list or table may split across two printed pages
- There is no way to force a new page to start between records
This is an important consideration for use cases like bulk order printing, where you'd want each order to start cleanly at the top of a new page.
Bulk Printing Multiple Records
If you need to print multiple records at once (for example, all orders for the next day), you have a few options:
Option 1 — Grid view print: Set up a page with a Grid view filtered to the relevant records (e.g., "Status is Tomorrow's Orders"). Enable the print link on that page. Users can print the full filtered grid in one action. Note that formatting will be basic and may require some browser-level adjustments to fit the content cleanly.
Option 2 — List view print: A List view gives you slightly more layout flexibility than a grid and can make record-by-record data easier to scan. The same page-break limitation applies.
Option 3 — Export to CSV: If the output is for internal use, exporting the filtered records to a spreadsheet is often the most practical option. Use the export feature on any Grid view to download records as a CSV.
For Polished, Custom PDFs
If you need formatted, customer-facing PDFs — with full control over layout, page breaks, and branding — the best approach is to send data out of Knack into a dedicated document generation tool. Knack integrates with Formstack Documents for this purpose, which can generate professional PDFs populated with your Knack data.
You can also post a project in the Knack Expert Network to connect with a developer who can build a custom PDF solution.
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Updated 27 days ago