WD2000: Printing Multiple Documents Opens Separate Instances of Word (209810)

SYMPTOMS

When you select several documents (20 or more) from within Windows Explorer and then print the documents (in Windows Explorer, on the File menu, click Print), after you print about 20 documents, the following error message appears:

Too many DDE channels are open. Please close a window.

When you click OK to the error message, another instance of Word opens for each of the remaining documents you selected to print.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use the following sample Visual Basic for Applications macro to print multiple documents.

The following macro prints all Word documents found in the specified directory:

Sub PrintDocs()

    Dim sDir As String
    Dim sDocToPrint As String
    
    sDir = "C:\My Documents\"                 ' Set document directory.
    sDocToPrint = Dir(sDir & "*.Doc")         ' Set document type, in
                                              ' this case, Word documents.

    WordBasic.DisableAutoMacros 1             ' Disable AutoMacros.
    Do While sDocToPrint <> ""
        Documents.Open sDir & sDocToPrint           ' Open the document
        ActiveDocument.PrintOut Background:=True    ' Print the document in
                                                    ' the background.
        ActiveDocument.Close                        ' Close the document.
        sDocToPrint = Dir                           ' Get next file in
                                                    ' sequence to print.
    Loop
    WordBasic.DisableAutoMacros 0             ' Enable AutoMacros.

End Sub

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements.

REFERENCES

For more information about how to use the sample code in this article, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

212536 OFF2000: How to Run Sample Code from Knowledge Base Articles