Printing Without Opening the Program

[jbwamsley]

Is there a way to print a Word document, via macro or any other means,
without actually having the program open (even briefly)?

I've got a macro program in which I can create a macro to print a Word doc
at a scheduled time, but it will quickly open Word, print the doc, and then
close Word. This wouldn't be so bad, but the plan is to accumulate many of
these macros and it will certainly interfere with the users ability to work
if the program is popping open throughout the day.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?amJ3YW1zbGV5?=,

Is there a way to print a Word document, via macro or any other means,
without actually having the program open (even briefly)?

No, there is not. In order to send a file to the printer, you require a
program that knows how to interpret the file format for the printer driver.
Windows associates the various extensions with a specific program, then runs
that program to print the document. In the case of Word, that's the Word
application. There might be third-party programs out there that can print Word
documents, but if there are, I've never heard of them. The way Word is
designed, it must open the document and lay it out before it can print.

What you could perhaps do is to start to start two instances of Word, the
first one for the user, the second for you. Make the first visible, but not
the second. Leave it run for the entire Windows session and make sure you use
that application instance whenever you want to print.

I've got a macro program in which I can create a macro to print a Word doc
at a scheduled time, but it will quickly open Word, print the doc, and then
close Word. This wouldn't be so bad, but the plan is to accumulate many of
these macros and it will certainly interfere with the users ability to work
if the program is popping open throughout the day.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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