Printing Word Documents in C#

Introduction

I feel I need to share this pain. I have been struggling for days now to get something simple to work for me. That is to print out a Word document (RTF format) to a printer using Word. It also has to work with multiple versions of Word (so far 2000 and 2003). I thought I would share everything that I have learnt.

If you want this to work for multiple versions, install the earliest version of Word and Add Reference to its COM component and develop against these.

Next to the code...

The Code

// Create an Application object
Word.ApplicationClass ac = new Word.ApplicationClass();
Word.Application app = ac.Application;

// I'm setting all of the alerts to be off as I am trying to get
// this to print in the background
app.DisplayAlerts = Word.WdAlertLevel.wdAlertsNone;

// Open the document to print...
object filename = "myFile.rtf";
object missingValue = Type.Type.Missing;

// Using OpenOld so as to be compatible with other versions of Word
Word.Document document = app.Documents.OpenOld(ref filename,
ref missingValue, ref missingValue, 
ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue, 
	ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue);

// Set the active printer
app.ActivePrinter = "My Printer Name";

object myTrue = true; // Print in background
object myFalse = false;

// Using PrintOutOld to be version independent
m_App.ActiveDocument.PrintOutOld(ref myTrue, 
ref myFalse, ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue, 
	missingValue, ref missingValue, 
ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref myFalse, 
	ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref m_MissingValue);

document.Close(ref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue);

// Make sure all of the documents are gone from the queue
while(m_App.BackgroundPrintingStatus > 0)
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(250);
}

app.Quitref missingValue, ref missingValue, ref missingValue);

I do not claim that this is perfect, but it's as good as I can get. It works on my machine anyway.

History

• 15^th July, 2005: Initial post