Adjust Printer Settings

You can optimize printer settings, and improve the speed of printing documents, by following these steps:

Print Large Documents
To print large documents faster, turn off your screen saver during the print job. Animated screen savers devour computer processor time and slow down the print job. If possible, turn off all screen savers. They do more harm than good.

Print Proofs Quickly
Use the Draft output option when you want to print review documents. Complex design and layouts will not be printed, meaning that the document will be printed faster.

To turn on the Draft output option, follow these steps.

On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Print tab.
Under Printing options, click to select the Draft output checkbox.
Click OK.

Use the Background Printing Option

When background printing is turned on, you can continue to work in Word while your document prints in the background. In theory, this is great. The reality is that background printing devours memory, slowing down the printing process and often locking you out of your machine. When background printing is turned off, documents tend to print faster.
To continue working in Word while your document prints, turn off background printing as follows.