Question

I have a simple batch file here which will print a word document from the command line.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe" "p:\docs\daily checks.doc" /mFilePrintDefault /mFileExit

I am trying to place this into a python script, I have managed to get the document to open by using

subprocess.Popen('"C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe"' '"P:\\docs\\daily checks.doc "')

I can’t seem to get the /mFilePrintDefault /mFileExit part in the command, I have tried using +'"/mFilePrintDefault /mFileExit"' plus without the +, but then the document won’t open.

Can you possibly help to see how I can print this word document, or is there a better way

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

This should work:

subprocess.Popen(["C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe", "P:\\docs\\daily checks.doc", "/mFilePrintDefault", "/mFileExit"]).communicate()

Or, altenatively,

subprocess.Popen("'C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe' 'P:\\docs\\daily checks.doc' /mFilePrintDefault /mFileExit", shell=True).communicate()

When you use shell=True the command is executed through a shell. This means that you have to pass a single string the same way as you would write the command in a shell, that is, with the quotes to prevent arguments with spaces to be splitted.

When you use shell=False (the default value), the command isn’t executed through a shell. This means that you’ve to split the arguments yourself. The way you do this, is passing a list with all the arguments. In this case, no extra quoting is needed because the list elements already provide this information.