No Print Option

[witch]

When trying to batch print, our Dep Head selects some docs, but there is NO print option to be seen.
They are XML docs created by SIMS. He used to be able to print them.
Any idea how I can change it?
(Don't know if this is a Win 7 or SIMS issue)

[witch]

Someone must know!!

[Steve21]

It's Windoes 7 :P XML files can't be right clicked and printed. Think you may be able to force it to print through another program, will take a look.

Steve

[dhicks]

NO print option to be seen. They are XML docs created by SIMS.

Right click to print multiple word docs

[witch]

Thanks -of course I didn't find that but I did search.
However, having read that thread and the one it links to, there is so much going on that I am not sure which bits I need to get what I want. Can someone distill it for me?

[Pete10141748]

*sigh* If only this was last week, when I spent ages going through 120 .xml files from SIMS.net individually to print them

I spent so much time trying to find out how to print them in bulk that I decided it was quicker to just open them all in Word one by one and click on print! LOL

[dhicks]

Can someone distill it for me?

Make sure your default printer is set to the printer you want, with any options (duplex, colour, paper size, etc) set how you want them. Open Word, go to File, Open, in the "open file" dialog box navigate to the folder where your bunch of XML documents are, select the ones you want to print, DON'T hit "Open" but hit the "Tools" button instead (bottom left of the dialog box), where you'll find a print option.

Particularly annoying as we spend a lot of time trying to explain to people that Word is not a file manager and that you don't have to try and open every file through it and that you should use Windows file manager for exactly this kind of thing...

[witch]

Make sure your default printer is set to the printer you want, with any options (duplex, colour, paper size, etc) set how you want them. Open Word, go to File, Open, in the "open file" dialog box navigate to the folder where your bunch of XML documents are, select the ones you want to print, DON'T hit "Open" but hit the "Tools" button instead (bottom left of the dialog box), where you'll find a print option.

Particularly annoying as we spend a lot of time trying to explain to people that Word is not a file manager and that you don't have to try and open every file through it and that you should use Windows file manager for exactly this kind of thing...

That doesnt work in 2010 I'm afraid - not on the laptop in question.

[Steve21]

That doesnt work in 2010 I'm afraid - not on the laptop in question.

Stupid question, but do you actually want this printed XML style, (like if opened in IE), or just the data printed? If that makes sense.

Steve

[dhicks]

That doesnt work in 2010 I'm afraid - not on the laptop in question.

Your best bet is probably to try one of the registry modifications @vikpaw details in the thread I linked to above.

[witch]

Your best bet is probably to try one of the registry modifications @vikpaw details in the thread I linked to above.

Yes but that's my issue - I cant see which ones - he talks of two but i cant find the first one.
I dont know what the boss wants printed - the whole thing I think.
Def a Win 7 issue as he has just emailed me to say that it works on an XP machine.

[FN-GM]

When someone dumped 1000.xml files to be printed (reports from sims) I used the Bulk File Utility to rename all 1000 to .doc format rahter than .mxl then hit the print button. This worked a treat and took minutes to do. I didnt expect it to work to be honest.

[vikpaw]

Hi,
Sorry, missed this as had a busy weekend. Included links to exact posts with the bits / scripts you need, even though the link name only shows thread name, it should take you to the right post.

There are a couple of things you can do. Renaming used to be my solution, but in Win 7 , they tend to print out of order which is a real pain, and seems to be a consequence of it actually multi-tasking which in this instance is a real pain if you are printing a class group out and need to keep the order.

For general long term usage i would enable right click print for .xml files using the registry hack i made here : Right click to print multiple word docs

It doesn't add much and can be deleted if you don't like it.

Now, windows 7 has a deliberate limitation on bulk tasks via context menu to 15 files, to overcome this, i would run the registry hack here : Right click to print multiple word docs

Again, only a simple addition to registry.

Now you can right click print an xml and multi select lots of them. There is still the downside i mentioned earlier which is that they'll print out of order.

The easiest way to beat this is to use the script mentioned here: Print XML files in bulk

but make the amendment i list here : Print XML files in bulk

Otherwise you'll end up with strange popups everytime you use Word.

The bulk print script is really good and @altecsole deserves some thanks for that - It takes a whole folder of files as input, just drag onto script, and will invoke Word and print them through in order which is great. It's old school serial access which works perfectly. It will deal with any Word compatible document as far as i know, so .doc, .xml and presumably anything else that Word 'likes'.

[witch]

Thanks Vik!
xxx

[vikpaw]

Hopefully it works out for you. If you're in a hurry, just go with the last option, i only mentioned the others, as it's handy to have those features available even on a single file basis. You might only want to print one file in a folder, so rather than faffing around, you can use the right click option for convenience.