How can I print out 20 individual Word documents at once?

Question

I need to print out 20 individual Word documents. I don't want to open each up and click Print.

Can I somehow print all at once?

Answer 1

In windows you can select multiple files right click and choose print and it will print all that you selected

however it with my testing it only works with up to 15 documents at a time (I guess it is to prevent an accidental catastrophe by printing the wrong folder.)

Answer 2

I'm thinking that this is more than just a one time need (otherwise you can use the Windows UI to select multiple documents, right-click, and choose print).

Would a macro be acceptable? Here's the basic code needed to open and print a Word doc from a macro:

Sub PrintDocMacro()

Dim objWord As Object
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.application") 'Start app
objWord.Documents.Open FileName:="c:\Temp\test.docx" 'Open doc
objWord.Visible = True
objWord.Application.PrintOut 'Print doc
objWord.ActiveDocument.Close savechanges:=True 'close & save doc
objWord.Application.Quit 'Close app
Set objWord = Nothing

End Sub

We'd need to write a loop to print all of the docs you want. If the docs you want to print are all of the docs in a given folder, we could do that too. Microsoft has example code for reading a directory.

If you want to print these on a schedule for some reason, I suppose you could make the file containing the macro run it with AutoOpen and even close when done and just schedule that macro-enabled file to be opened via the Task Scheduler.

Answer 3

I realize that this is an old question, but I didn't see the answer I use here.

You can use the right click option from the Windows Explorer shell to print multiple documents. Normally this has a 15 document limit; however, that limit can be changed in the registry. Here is the value to modify to your needed limit:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Name : MultipleInvokePromptMinimum
Type : DWORD
Default : 15 (decimal)

Hopefully that saves someone the trouble of using a macro.

Answer 4

This is a macro that lets you specify a folder and it will print all word files inside this folder including the subfolders.

Public optionCancel

Sub Print_word_files()
Dim path
Dim reminder As Integer
Dim oExtension As String
Dim Fso, oFolder, oSubfolder, oFile, queue As Collection

On Error Resume Next

path = " " //######################put files path here (ex: c:\users\myFiles) ################

If optionCancel = "yes" Then
optionCancel = "No"
Exit Sub
End If

reminder = MsgBox("Are you sure you want to print these files?", 4, "WARNING !!")

If reminder = 6 Then    'If Yes is clicked

Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set queue = New Collection
queue.Add Fso.GetFolder(path) 'The path

Do While queue.Count > 0
Set oFolder = queue(1)
queue.Remove 1 'dequeue
'...insert any <<folder>> processing code here...
For Each oSubfolder In oFolder.subfolders
queue.Add oSubfolder 'enqueue
Next oSubfolder
For Each oFile In oFolder.Files

oExtension = Right(oFile, Len(oFile) - InStrRev(oFile, ".", -1)) 'gets the file extension

If oExtension = "docx" Or oExtension = "DOCX" Or oExtension = "doc" Or oExtension = "DOC" Or oExtension = "docm" Or oExtension = "DOCM" Or oExtension = "rtf" Or oExtension = "RTF" Then

Documents.Open FileName:=(oFile)

'-------------------The required starts here

ActiveDocument.PrintOut      'Prints document

ActiveDocument.Saved = True  'to prevent asking to save

ActiveDocument.Close         'Closes document

'-------------------The required ends here

End If

Next oFile

Loop

Else

MsgBox ("Operation cancelled!!")

End If

End Sub

Answer 5

What about putting together some shell commands and submitting each file to the printer individually?

Or even:

 lpr *.doc

Combining Microsoft *.doc files is not really possible in the way you want to do it. This is due to all the document header information at the top of each file.

Answer 6

I print all documents (usually up to 30-32 documents) at once from a folder, by selecting all of them and then R-click and choose print. This sends to default printer with printer's current settings and current settings of each file. This was possible using Windows XP Professional, with MS Word 2003. Now we are switching to Windows 7 and I will need to figure out a new way and I did notice the file limit is 15 (if you select more than 15, "print all" is not available in R-click menu), which then you cannot just click on print and leave the computer to do something else, you have to wait until all printed and do it again. Also, the efficiency with which Windows XP and MSW 2003 opened a document and sent to print is way better than Windows 7 (but I was running 7 from a MAC Parallels Program).

I also noticed that if I open a blank Word window and re-size it to the bare minimimum rectangle on Desktop (this is not minimizing it to status bar) before I sent multiple files to Print, efficiency of Word with opening, sending and closing each file was increased.