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chrispt
Asked: 2010-11-12 06:07:31 +0800 CST

Batch File Printing

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I have a user that has to print out about 220 documents averaging 2-3 pages each. When printed using the standard Windows method of Select All - Right-click - Print it overwhelms either the print server or the printer itself. I am looking for a utility that will allow me to process say 5 documents at a time that will do all of the documents in a given directory. I am hoping this will alleviate strain on the print server and will also allow the user to not have to babysit his print jobs. I found one that lets you schedule a print job for a certain time, but (and maybe this isn't a deal breaker) the spelling in the program is atrocious.

windows printing batch-processing

2 Answers

  1. Answering an old question to build reputation points :P

    This VBS opens and prints a word doc:

    Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open("c:\scripts\inventory.doc")

objDoc.PrintOut()
objWord.Quit

    This VBS loops through files in a folder:

    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objStartFolder = "C:\Scripts"

Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(objStartFolder)

Set colFiles = objFolder.Files
For Each objFile in colFiles
    Wscript.Echo objFile.Name
Next

    This VBS causes the PC to wait 60 seconds, so as not to overwhelm the print server:

    WScript.sleep 60000

    Combining these:

    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objStartFolder = "C:\Scripts"

Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(objStartFolder)

Set colFiles = objFolder.Files
For Each objFile in colFiles
    Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
    Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open(objFile)

    objDoc.PrintOut()
    objWord.Quit
    WScript.sleep 60000
Next

    Change your "objStartFolder" to the folder where the word docs are located, and make sure there are only word docs in that folder. Save that code to a text file and change the extension to "vbs". It can be launched via double-click or by windows scheduler, so you can launch it in the middle of the night or wotnot.

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  2. (Assuming you're talking about MS Word) I'm not a Word expert by any stretch, but you could use a bit of VBA to do the trick, launching winword.exe from a script. I've seen it done, but never got sufficiently involved to provide any more info.

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