Printing functions can vary a lot with the driver installed, which of course differs from one printer to the next, even for the printers made by a single manufacturer.

In Word. in the page layout section, where you set margin widths, there should be a "gutter location." For a printer that turns the sheet over to print the backside of each sheet automatically, if you check "gutter left" WORD should send the pages so that the pages are all with the top of each side are at the same edge of the paper. If you check "gutter top" WORD should take care of any flipping the page it sends to the printer, so that the printer can handle the sheet turns the same way it always does for the two sides.

(If you're using one of the "imitation Word" programs, I would expect the gutter setting to be a choice that's available, but you'll have to look for it.)

The "gutter" is the extra margin for binding the pages together, or for punching holes to put them in a notebook, so the gutter location determines which way the page flips when you turn the pages in your "book."

If the printer turns the sheet over to print the second side automatically, it should take care of the orientation; but of course different printers may do it differently.

You only need to worry about reversing the print order for a printer that only prints one side at a time. That setting usually will be after you click "print," if the driver provides for it. In all the printers I've used recently, it's been in "page setup," "layout," or "options" button after you start the print process. You print one side, all the odd pages, or all the even pages. Then you run the whole stack back through to print the other side. ONE or the OTHER of the two passes needs to be in the opposite order.

On most inkjet printers the default you likely will have set is to print last page first so that the first page of the document is printed last and comes out on top, with the side with the wet ink up. Many laser printers print in page order, if they deliver the output "face down," and the first document page should come out on the bottom of the pile since the pile is face down.

If you put the stack, printed on one side, back in, the pages need to be printed "in reverse order" from what was used on the first pass, whether or not the printer default is to "reverse print" or is the other way around.

As you said, with this method, you may want to give the prints from the first pass of an inkjet printer time to dry a little, and maybe "fan the stack" to make sure none of the pages stick together, since any misfeed really messes up the page order.

Note that for the two-passes method, the document must have an even number of pages for everything to come out right, so you may have to have a blank last page in the document, if it's an even page number.

Changing the gutter location in the document should be sufficient to make things come out right, if you printer turns the sheets over and prints the other side automatically.

For a printer that can only print one side at a time, the two pass method can be used, and it's complicated enough that you can expect a few misprints, but it is a method that can be made to work to get two-sided documents out of any printer.

An option for the simpler printer is, of course, to re-stack the first output so the sheets are in the order the printer will feed them when you run them through the second time, without any change in settings. This usually means you'll have to restack them again when you get done, to put them in "reading order," but you won't have to puzzle quite as much over settings and which side up to make the second feed.

John