Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Printing the Active Document from a Macro.
Macros really can make life easier. It is not uncommon to create macros that perform repetitive tasks, and thereby relieve us of the mundane tasks we might otherwise need to perform. It is also not uncommon to need to print out the current document after doing some processing on it. If you find yourself with this need, you can simply let the macro take care of printing the current document. To add this capability to your macros, simply include a line like this:
ActiveDocument.PrintOut Copies:=1
The PrintOut method prints the specified document; in this case, the ActiveDocument object—the document currently selected—is printed. In this particular usage, the Copies argument is used to specify how many copies of the document to print.
When using the PrintOut method, there are quite a few different arguments you can use. Rather than detail all of them, it is probably more useful to just look at some of the more common arguments you can use.
| Argument | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| Copies | The number of copies to print. | |
| Pages | The page ranges to print. The ranges are separated by commas and enclosed in quote marks, similar to how you specify page ranges in the Print dialog box. | |
| PrintToFile | Normally False, but you can set it to True if you want output to go to a disk file instead of the printer. | |
| OutputFileName | Only necessary if you set PrintToFile to True. Used to specify the file name of the output file. |
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (830) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Printing the Active Document from a Macro.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: 
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