In the print dialog box, do you have an Options button in the lower left? Look there for ‘Options for Duplex Printing.’ You may have the wrong order checked.

I have an older version of Word, so yours might have this somewhere else.

I might also have suggested limiting your file size, perhaps chapter by chapter, rather than having the whole book in one file. I sure hope you back up frequently to another location. Not that Word can’t handle big files…I just wouldn’t be that trusting with my magnum opus.

In the print menu, hit options. Then check reverse print order. But like @Jeruba I have an older version. But I would assume the option is still there.

Click on the microsoft orb thing to bring up the menu. Click on word options (at the bottom of the menu). CLick on the advanced tab and then scroll down to the print section. Check the box for print in reverse order.

What the “collate” option does is if you are printing two copies of your report it will print 1 copy form begging to end and then a second copy from begging to end. If you turn “collate” off it will print each page twice, so you end up with page1page1, page2page2, page3page3…..

@Jeruba‘s suggestion that you split you work up is an exccelent one. Like she says if Word crashes (it never has on me, but it is always possible) it limits the amount of data you lose in one go.

In Microsoft Word, I went to Help and searched Print Reverse Order. I got the following:

Open the document you want to print.
Choose File > Print.
If the Print dialog box contains only two pop-up menus across the bottom, click the disclosure triangle beside the Printer pop-up menu.
Choose Paper Handling from the print options pop-up menu.
Choose Reverse from the Page Order pop-up menu.
Click Print.

Do you have your document saved to an external drive? Take it to a copy center and have it printed on a high speed printer. 400 pages will eat through through ink.

Also burn a CD for safekeeping. Like every week. Remember what happened to Thomas Carlyle’s epic manuscript of The French Revolution: A HIstory, an object lesson for overly trusting writers ever since:

“In February 1835, Carlyle shared a draft of the first book with Mill. At midnight on the evening of March 6, a hysterical Mill appeared at Carlyle’s door and delivered the news that one of his servants mistook Carlyle’s manuscript for wastepaper and threw it in the fire. “Poor manuscript, all except some four tattered leaves, was annihilated!” he wrote of the upsetting news.

Carlyle now had to reconstruct the first book. There were no drafts or backup copies from which to work. He didn’t take notes. His method was to read, then write like mad. Sections he found lacking were tossed in the fire. “I was as a little Schoolboy, who had laboriously written out his Copy as he could, and was shewing it not without satisfaction to the Master: but . . . the Master had suddenly torn it, saying: ‘No, boy, thou must go and write it better.’” ” [ source ]