Although I've managed to reduce the size of the .pdf files from over 200KB to about 50KB each, the overall process is no faster.

I am issuing Set Printer to Name PdfPrinter at the beginning of the batch of documents but perhaps should go back to issuing it immediately before each individual document prints. It really seems like having the Printer set to PDF slows Word down on every single command, not just the ActiveDocument.PrintOut itself.

Oddly, I don't remember PDF printing being particularly slow when I tested this module several weeks ago. It's rather inconvenient that it should show up just as we're beginning beta testing. I could hope the client won't notice or that the feature might not be used but it's pretty high on their "wish list." Of course I could be lucky and it will simply run much faster in their environment.