Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Opening and Printing a Document.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 18, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
Joe indicated that he was having a problem opening and immediately printing a document in Word. If he opened and immediately tried to print a document, Word wouldn't do it. Instead, he had to open, make some small edit, and then print the document in order for it to work.
Some readers suggested that this could be due to Word being busy doing background tasks before coming "up to speed." When you open a document in Word, it takes time for the document to be examined (internally) by Word, for pagination to occur, and for the program to become "responsive." On slower systems, the startup delay can be noticeable—particularly with large or complex documents. If this is the problem, then it may be just a matter of not printing immediately, but allowing Word to complete its internal document-opening sequences (perhaps a few seconds) before actually printing.
There is another approach to printing that you may want to consider. If your only purpose in opening the document is to print, then you can right-click the document's name and choose Print from the Context menu. This works either in Windows Explorer or in the Open dialog box in Word. Printing in this way produces the output, without leaving the document open in Word.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12267) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Opening and Printing a Document.
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2021-02-19 12:45:00
Charles Molway
Having read on this site a user's complaint involving sections, I had a thought. I tried p6s3 instead of p6s2 and it printed! p9s3 also worked. Yet, as far as I know, my document still has only two sections. So while I might have stumbled upon a fix, I don't know the cause.
2021-02-18 14:55:13
Charles Molway
Along this line, printing problems and solutions, during the past year or three I have experienced increasing difficulty printing those pages for which you need to specify page and section when a document has more than one section, such as the first section with Roman Numeral pages that include such things as the title page, copyright page, TOC, et al., and the second section with Arabic numbered pages from one on, starting at chapter one of a novel or such, eg p3s2.
I was usually able to get the page printed by troubleshooting, or worse case, disconnecting and reconnecting the printer. Those remedies stopped working a couple of days ago. A reader's comment brought me a moment of insight. I inputted s3 instead of s2 and the page printed.
I have no idea how my document now has a section three, or how to explain why the previous remedies used to work.
Can anyone explain this?
Charlie M.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here:
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