Unable to print more than one document at a time.

Hi,

I am not sure if the issue is with me or the printer or what, but I cannot seem to get it to print more than one document at a time.

Situation:

We print out envelopes once a week and it would be nice to print them out all at once. I used Automator to make an Application that prints out documents that I select. It looks like this:


My problem is that no matter how many files I select, only the first file prints out. The rest are lost somehow. I googled around and searched the mac forums and found out that if you open up your printer queue and drag and drop the files into it, it will print them out without ever needing Automator. But this resulted in the same problem. No matter how many files I dragged over only the first one printed. The rest do not even show up in the print queue. I have tried to print to two separate printers with the same issue.

Does anyone know why this might be happening or how to work around it?

I am running on macOS Sierra version 10.12.6.
The files I am trying to print are Word docs
I am trying to print them from a remote drive.

Thanks,

Welcome to our forums.

A couple of questions....

1. Which version of Mac Word are you using?

2. What happens when you try printing multiple documents using another application?

I'm going to run some tests using Word 2011 and Pages. I also have 2 printers setup here in my office: HP LaserJet and Epson.

I just tested this with my HP printer and Word 2011 and had no difficulty printing multiple documents although there was definitely a slight delay while the print queue caught up.

I haven't tried doing the same thing with Pages but I suspect it will the same way.

chscag said:

Welcome to our forums.

A couple of questions....

1. Which version of Mac Word are you using?

2. What happens when you try printing multiple documents using another application?

I'm going to run some tests using Word 2011 and Pages. I also have 2 printers setup here in my office: HP LaserJet and Epson.

I just tested this with my HP printer and Word 2011 and had no difficulty printing multiple documents although there was definitely a slight delay while the print queue caught up.

I haven't tried doing the same thing with Pages but I suspect it will the same way.

Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Based on your feedback I tried a few more things.

When I got into the office today I was able to drag 2 items to the printer just fine. All documents dropped were queued and printed. This worked for PDF and Word Docs.

Here and there as I was testing if I dragged more than 5 files into the print queue sometimes only 1 or 2 would actually load in, but the feature was working for the most part. I tried as many as 11 from both the remote drive and desktop from both PDF and Word docs successfully. The Automator application still does not print more than 1 at a time.

1. I have Mac Word 2016 version 15.39

Thanks,

Have a look on the HP website and see if there is a driver update.

badshoehabit said:

Have a look on the HP website and see if there is a driver update.

Click to expand...

Hi,

I went ahead and did the update to Mac High Sierra which included an HP printer driver update. This has made a difference.

PDF Files have no trouble getting added to the queue and printing. Mac Word sometimes still leaves out one or two. The Automator program I made also prints out more than 1 Word document now, but not nearly all that I select. It may print out 5 out of 10. I am thinking there is something with how the program works with Mac Word. When I drag the Word Docs into the queue it looks like the operating system is opening, printing, and then closing each individual document for me. Its like its doing the same thing I do, but much faster. I was thinking that it could do the work behind the scenes, but I guess it also goes through the same motions I would have.

My conclusion is that perhaps the operating system is telling Word to print faster than it can open and close the documents. For whatever reason, PDF's do not have an issue. I mostly print word doc's so thats annoying, but probably something I can live with. Maybe I will change them to pdf's and then print them.

Thanks,

My conclusion is that perhaps the operating system is telling Word to print faster than it can open and close the documents. For whatever reason, PDF's do not have an issue. I mostly print word doc's so thats annoying, but probably something I can live with. Maybe I will change them to pdf's and then print them.

Click to expand...

You could probably do it that way, but it might even be slower as Word converts the documents to PDF. The sad part about all this is that the Windows version of Word has no problem with fast printing of multiple documents and many other things. As usual, Microsoft has given Mac users a less than stellar product. By the way, I have Office 2016 but refuse to use it and continue using Office 2011 because it's faster and has retained options that MS removed with the 2016 version. You could probably run Office 365 which includes Word 2016 which supposedly has all the same options and speed of the Windows version.

chscag said:

You could probably do it that way, but it might even be slower as Word converts the documents to PDF. The sad part about all this is that the Windows version of Word has no problem with fast printing of multiple documents and many other things. As usual, Microsoft has given Mac users a less than stellar product. By the way, I have Office 2016 but refuse to use it and continue using Office 2011 because it's faster and has retained options that MS removed with the 2016 version. You could probably run Office 365 which includes Word 2016 which supposedly has all the same options and speed of the Windows version.

Click to expand...

I use excel a lot and noticed right away excel 2016 was a stripped down version. I’m not sure why they would remove functionality and package it as better. Thanks for the help. I’ll probably try this same stuff on another computer and see what happens.