You don’t need Microsoft Word just to print a few text files. Instead, you can use the Shell object – which is built right into the operating system – to print text files. And what’s cool about this is the fact that you can print these files even though the Shell object doesn’t have a Print method.

You can do this is because the Shell object has a method called InvokeVerbEx that lets you perform the tasks that show up when you right-click a file in Windows Explorer. Right-click one of your text files, and look at the context menu that pops up. You should see things like Open, Print, Edit, Cut, Copy, Delete, etc. The Shell object lets you perform all those tasks programmatically.