custom labels & mailmerge (97 sr2)

Topic

New Reply

I’m a refugee from the Excel lounge, and was hoping to find a ‘search’ button here as I suspect my problem (ignorance?) is scarcely new.
What I’ve failed to do is this:
Create mailing labels 210mm wide and 99mm high, 3 to a page of A4 paper.
To go into a DL window envelope, so I want placeholders for 5 rows of name & address starting about 55mm from the top and 40mm from the left.
Set in Arial at about 12 point, ‘single’ spacing. Flush left alignment. Character spacing, leading, etc left at the defaults.
AND THEN – on the right-hand half of the label (so it doesn’t show in the window), text saying, ‘Your balances at the end of April were:’
[newline] Savings

Reply | Quote

Replies

Can you adapt this to your needs? Apart from getting the layout right, you’ll need to make it into a mail merge document again, link to the data source and replace the dummy merge fields.

Reply | Quote

Thanks very much, Hans!
(I didn’t realise you sullied your brain with anything not involving VBA, or at the very least, entities which don’t live in cells!)
Will have a go at it tonight, and come back if I need to….

Reply | Quote

Hans,
Progress, but not a solution, and I’m still stuck…
Your ‘worked example’ works really well…. for the first 3 records.
On sheet 1, ie the first 3 labels, it prints records 1, 2 and 3.
Then on sheet 2 – you’ve guessed it – it prints records 2, 3 and 4.
And so on.
With brain engaged, I’ve got it to print as follows, by adjusting your ‘next record’ fields:
Sheet 1: records 1, 4, 7
and on following sheets: 2, 5, 8, then 3, 6, 9 – so far, so good.
You’ve guessed the next bit, too:
Sheet 4 prints records 4, 7 and 10, and so on.
What Word needs (I think!) is an instruction to the effect “Every 9 records, go to the next record and carry on, using the same rules that you’ve used for the previous nine”. Is that right?
Anyway, I don’t know how to tell it to do that.
Out of curiosity, I threw the problem at one of the Avery Label templates which come with Word, hoping for inspiration.
On a 24-label page, page 1 was records 1 to 24, page 2 was records 2 to 25, and so on.
A workaraound which works is to copy the template page enough times to accomodate the dataset, and paste the ‘next record’ field into label one of each page except the first.
But there must be better ways!
VBA allowed if necessary, if someone will tell me exactly how to create and populate the required module, project or whatever.
The attachment shows how far I’ve got: my problem is the mailmerge – all records, once only: I’ve np problem with the pretty-pretty bits. The hugely challenging data source for this example is a list of numbers from 1 to 100! The field is called _record. (My present need is for about 250 records, but presumably we’ll reach a general solution – for a 3-label sheet, anyway.)
I liked your paragraph setting of 159.95 points space above – didn’t know Word claimed such precision!
Is Dutch Word free from the irritating feature of “English” Word – that of trying to force users to spell in US English at little or no provocation?
Thank you very sincerely for your help and encouragement.

Reply | Quote

Have you actually performed a merge to a new document? In the “record preview” mode of the merge document, you will see the behaviour you describe, but when you merge to the printer or to a new document, you should get 1,2,3 then 4,5,6 etc., without any tricks, VBA etc. It does on my PC!
Note: you must revert to the original number of {NEXT} fields for this – one each at the start of the second and third labels.

In Dutch Word 97, I have to set a language for spell checking manually. The default is Dutch. Word 2002 is able to detect when I type in English, but always selects UK English, even if I type color or aluminum.

Reply | Quote

No, Hans – if I have only been messed up because the ‘record preview’ option does not show what will actually happen, I apologise for troubling you (but I hope you won’t feel badly of me.)
Will try again tonight, by by restoring your handiwork and physically printing the first 12 records, initially.
The ‘record preview’ option tells the truth with form letters – haven’t used labels much, before.
Used to use Works, which, er, works.
Thanks again.

Reply | Quote