Microsoft KB Archive/209810

= WD2000: Printing Multiple Documents Opens Separate Instances of Word =

Article ID: 209810

Article Last Modified on 6/17/2005

-

APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition

-



This article was previously published under Q209810



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.

