Word: Print Multiple Files At Once

Contributed by davak

January 25, 2004

Tagged: Microsoft Word

In word it is easy to print several files at once without loading them first.

Word makes it easy to print several files at once. The user does not even need to open them first.

(This sends the files straight to the printer without allowing you to adjust your printer settings.)

1. Click the File Menu
2. Select Open
3. After the open window displays, select the files you wish to print.
4. Right click on one of the selected files to open the context menu
5. Left click Print from the context menu.

This is perfect when your boss wants last month’s reports printed NOW!

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Viewing 18 Comments

Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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I tried this and it comes up with this error:

"The command you selected is not available from this shortcut menu."

Please explain!

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ethanhello 4 years ago 1 point
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you can actually just highlight them in an explorer window-- no need to start word (windows will do this for you and for each document)

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THXMan 4 years ago 1 point
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This ability seems to be broken in Win XP with Office 2003, however. You can print one document this way, but if you select and try to print multiple documents this way, nothing happens.

If anyone has a fix for this, let me know.

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lawman 4 years ago 1 point
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with office 2003, there is an option under 'tools', in the file list which lets you print multiple documents.

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onomatopeon 4 years ago 1 point
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does anyone know a way to add or control page numbering to multiple files being printed? is there any way to specify that all files appear in the same font? thanks!

sari

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Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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Does anyone know how I can print the first page only when printing multiple files using Windows Explorer?

Thank you,
MWORLD

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timroberts 4 years ago 1 point
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I wanted to clarify lawman's comment, which helped me today. The option he is talking about is in the File->Open dialog. That dialog contains a Tools menu with a Print option. Don't look for Print in Tools on the main menu, like I did!

I was able to print multiple documents today from Word 2003 on Windows XP by selecting them in the File->Open dialog and picking Print from the right-click menu. I got the warning mentioned by "Guest" 18 times, but each of the documents did print.

Word needs a way to have a master document that includes/refers to other documents. They have the master document concept, but it only works if you start with it from scratch.

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Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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I was able to print more than one file using the context menu print, but now I am only able to print one file at a time or it doesn't work any ideas would be great.

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jnation@wsfsbank.com 4 years ago 1 point
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Is there a solution to this request??

HELP ! !

<ul id="quote"><h6>mworld wrote:</h6>Does anyone know how I can print the first page only when printing multiple files using Windows Explorer?

Thank you,
MWORLD</ul>

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davak 4 years ago 1 point
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No... there is no solution that I know of. :(

Why is this so important? Seems like a very strange requirement... Somebody could probably write you a visual basic program pretty quickly that could do this.

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paulm235 4 years ago 1 point
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This worked but is there a way to select a different printer? It seems to only want to print to the defult printer and doesn't give you the option of selecting a different printer. Any ideas?

<ul id="quote"><h6>timroberts wrote:</h6>I wanted to clarify lawman's comment, which helped me today. The option he is talking about is in the File->Open dialog. That dialog contains a Tools menu with a Print option. Don't look for Print in Tools on the main menu, like I did!

I was able to print multiple documents today from Word 2003 on Windows XP by selecting them in the File->Open dialog and picking Print from the right-click menu. I got the warning mentioned by "Guest" 18 times, but each of the documents did print.

Word needs a way to have a master document that includes/refers to other documents. They have the master document concept, but it only works if you start with it from scratch.</ul>

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E-Hounds 4 years ago 1 point
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<ul id="quote"><h6>davak wrote:</h6>No... there is no solution that I know of. :(

Why is this so important? Seems like a very strange requirement... Somebody could probably write you a visual basic program pretty quickly that could do this.</ul>

We have 640 documents and need to submit them to the court for a criminal case. It's not the content of the docs that matters, but whether or not they exist somewhere else. Someone needs to look at each and every document to compare against existing hard copy. Some of the docs are 20 to 120 pages. Rather than burn through 100+ trees of paper...

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Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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<ul id="quote"><h6>Anonymous wrote:</h6>I was able to print more than one file using the context menu print, but now I am only able to print one file at a time or it doesn't work any ideas would be great.</ul>

I have that same problem where nothng happens if I want to print multiple files either from Word or Windows Explorer. I'm using Windows XP and Word 2002. I have a few machine with that exact same problem.

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Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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<ul id="quote"><h6>Anonymous wrote:</h6></ul><ul id="quote"><h6>Anonymous wrote:</h6>I was able to print more than one file using the context menu print, but now I am only able to print one file at a time or it doesn't work any ideas would be great.</ul>

I have that same problem where nothng happens if I want to print multiple files either from Word or Windows Explorer. I'm using Windows XP and Word 2002. I have a few machine with that exact same problem.

You could have a context menu handler problem. See this http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm for how to correct it.

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brain 2 years ago 1 point
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DOES ANYONE HAVE AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER TO THIS?

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Anonymous 2 years ago 1 point
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I had the issue of not being able to print when right clicking on files in Windows Explorer. When selecting to print, nothing would happen if mulitple files were selected; no error, nothing.

I took the advise of a "Guest" and went to the website on right click responses, downloaded ShellExView (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html) and figured out it was a bad context menu from installing WS Ftp. Once that was disabled, the printing worked fine.

Thanks for all your help!

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Anonymous 2 years ago 1 point
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<ul id="quote"><h6>timroberts wrote:</h6>I wanted to clarify lawman's comment, which helped me today. The option he is talking about is in the File->Open dialog. That dialog contains a Tools menu with a Print option. Don't look for Print in Tools on the main menu, like I did!

I was able to print multiple documents today from Word 2003 on Windows XP by selecting them in the File->Open dialog and picking Print from the right-click menu. I got the warning mentioned by "Guest" 18 times, but each of the documents did print.

Word needs a way to have a master document that includes/refers to other documents. They have the master document concept, but it only works if you start with it from scratch.</ul>

When you are speaking of the option FILE-OPEN DIALOG, is that available when you open Word 2003? When I go to FILE, there is no option for OPEN DIALOG. What if I wanted to print a variety of file types like, PDF, Word, and Excel? Please advise.

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Hack_Vista 2 years ago 1 point
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The original recipe works well.

For example, I just selected several items on my desktop, right clicked on one, and then selected print. It worked for txt, doc, and html files. I didn't try excel.

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