print div content – Print only the content of an HTML element and not the whole document

JavaScript Add comments

This snippet will print the contents of any html element and not the entire page.
Get the contents of the innerhtml of the element. Here it is a div. We are going to print the contents of a div.
Define an iframe (better before this script).
This iframe is hidden on the screen by giving the style so and so.
Get a reference to the iframe’s contentwindow so that you can write the contents of the div in to the body of the iframe.
Use the close command like in the script else you can see that the browser is still loading the page even if you have completely written all the text into the content window.
So when you do close call you specify that there is no more contents to write to.
And then we make the iframe as the active window because when you print the active windows total body content will gets printed.
and then we call the print command. voila.
Without any modification this code snippet works well for me so hope it would be the same case for you guys.

The JavaScript code

var content = document.getElementById("divcontents");
var pri = document.getElementById("ifmcontentstoprint").contentWindow;
pri.document.open();
pri.document.write(content.innerHTML);
pri.document.close();
pri.focus();
pri.print();

The HTML Code

<iframe id="ifmcontentstoprint" style="height: 0px; width: 0px; position: absolute"></iframe>

Why the need of an iframe?
as you all know when you print the whole document gets printed.
So we create a hidden new document with the help of an iframe and we assign the contents we want to print to the body of the iframe.
So the iframe will contain only the contents which we want to print.
And since the iframe is hidden everything will appear normal at the same the work is done.

7 Responses to “print div content – Print only the content of an HTML element and not the whole document”

  1. jonathan Says:

    I’ve been looking for this answer… thanks. One question. Where do we put the script? is it in the head area or in the button that prints? and can you create the print button in the div you are printing?

  2. Fernando Says:

    Thanks for sharing your knowledge, it has been very useful for me.

    The problem i found now is that the css that are called at the head are not included so the printing does not show the styling.

    Thanks again.

  3. Arjun Says:

    Thanks Jayapal, was searching all over for this. None of the code gave me the perfect result as ur code gave. Thanks a lot 🙂

  4. Barbio Says:

    I have a background image in a div and its not printing it.

    How can we fix this?

  5. admin Says:

    @Barbio

    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/596876/how-can-i-print-background-images-in-ff-or-ie

    Refer this link. I haven’t experimented it.

  6. Ria Says:

    Works like a charm. But you should reset the focus to the main window after print() has been called. Otherwise Ctrl+F5 will reload the iframe and not the page.

  7. Rejna Says:

    I am having a jsp form,but the input values are not getting printed

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