Print to a specific printer.

Word will normally print to the default Windows printer, though you can set an alternative 'active printer' which will remain the printer Word prints to for the current session, or until changed to another. Where you have more than one printer - e.g. a laser printer for draft work, a colour printer for photographs, or maybe a fax driver - and you regularly switch between them; you can lose track of which printer the document will be sent to.

You can get around this by creating a 'printers' toolbar with buttons to call a macro, similar to that shown below, for each printer. Clearly each macro will have to have a unique name.

The macros work by saving the current active printer data, switching the active printer to that required, printing the document, then restoring the saved active printer data.

Sub MyPrint()
Dim sCurrentPrinter As String

sCurrentPrinter = ActivePrinter
ActivePrinter = "Put the name of the required printer here"
Application.PrintOut FileName:=""
ActivePrinter = sCurrentPrinter

If the printer has switchable trays, and you always wish to print from a specific tray, then the code may be modified slightly to select the required option. There is however an issue with using the tray assignments by name. If an error occurs when setting the option Word 2003 crashes and Word 2007 ignores the assignment.

To ensure that this works correctly, it is much better to use the DefaultTrayID number. If you don't know the Tray ID numbers for your printer (and why should you) ensure that Word is configured to use the printer in question, then record a macro setting the Page Setup including the required tray assignments. In the illustration below I have chosen Trays 1 and 2.

This will produce a macro listing as follows:

Sub LaserTray2()
Dim sCurrentPrinter As String

Dim sTray As Integer
sCurrentPrinter = ActivePrinter

sTray = Options.DefaultTrayID

To demonstrate, I have chosen a couple of real world examples, using an HP 4050 postscript printer and Windows Fax

Sub FaxPrint()
Dim sCurrentPrinter As String

On Cancel GoTo Cancelled:
sCurrentPrinter = ActivePrinter
ActivePrinter = "Fax"
Application.PrintOut FileName:=""

Cancelled:
ActivePrinter = sCurrentPrinter
End Sub

Sub HPPrintTray2()
Dim sCurrentPrinter As String

Dim sTray As Integer

sCurrentPrinter = ActivePrinter
sTray = Options.DefaultTrayID

The previous examples simply swap the printer and print the document without user interference, but you may wish to display the print dialog box to set print options for the current task. This requires a slightly different approach.

The following macro requires the code by Astrid Zeelenberg at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/AvailablePrinters.htm to list the available printers in an array.

You can then use this array to check whether the printer you need is available and then print to it. In the following example, I have checked to see if the array contains a printer with the word COLOR in the printer name having converted the printer names to upper case for consistency. If the routine finds such a printer name, the routine sets that printer as active printer and prints the document to it, before returning control to the original printer. If there are no printers available or no printers that match the required condition, pop up message boxes inform the user and the document is not printed.

Sub PrintColor()
Dim StrPrinters As Variant,

The Windows Fax driver used in the above example is not installed by default with Windows, but may be added if required:

From The Windows Start menu - select Control Panel then Add or Remove Programs

Select Add/remove Windows Components

Check the Fax Services item and click 'Next' to install.

This adds the fax driver to the 'Printers' group

Select Printers and Other Hardware from Control Panel then View installed printers or fax printers.

Select Fax and then Set printer properties

Choose your modem and set its properties to your requirements.