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 Documents in a Folder.

Printing Documents in a Folder

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 1, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Have you collected a bunch of documents in a folder, and you want to print all the documents? There are a couple of quick and easy ways you can do this. The first method involves the use of Windows, not Word. Follow these general steps:

Display the folder that contains all the documents you want to print.
Create a selection set of the documents you want to print. (Select them all, using Ctrl and Shift to help put the selection set together.)
Right-click on one of the selected documents. Windows displays a Context menu.
Choose Print from the Context menu.

Word is automatically started and each document is printed, in turn. You can also apply a variation on this approach:

In Word, display the Open dialog box.
Using the controls in the dialog box, display the folder that contains the documents you want to print.
Create a selection set of the documents you want to print.
Right-click any of the selected documents and choose Print from the resulting Context menu.

If you prefer a macro approach to printing the documents, there are many different ways you can implement the macro. One example can be found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, at this URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306346

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3413) 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 Documents in a Folder.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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