Question

I want to print a Word document, mydocument.docx, from a button in an Excel sheet. Both are in the same folder.

I don’t want users to see the Word document. They just click the button in Excel.

I can create a button in Excel and make it open an empty vb. This is as much as I know. If you can explain this in steps that would be so awesome.

Answer 1

You can use the Word automation object model to gain programmatic access to Word.

In almost all cases, you’d be following these steps:

1. Create the Word application object.
2. Open a document.
3. Do something with the document.
4. Close the document.
5. Quit the Word application.

Here is what the basic VBA code looks like:

' Step 1
Dim objWord
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
' Hidden window!
objWord.Visible = False
' Save the original printer, otherwise you will reset the system default!
Dim previousPrinter
Set previousPrinter = objWord.ActivePrinter
objWord.ActivePrinter = "My Printer Name"

' Step 2
Dim objDoc
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open("C:\Test\SomeDocument.docx")

' Step 3 -- in this case, print out the document without any prompts
objDoc.PrintOut
' Restore the original printer
objWord.ActivePrinter = previousPrinter

' Step 4
objDoc.Close

' Step 5
objWord.Quit