Corrupt fonts when printing a merged document

[Mark J Barefoot]

We are experiencing a problem when creating a mail-merged document. A number
of our users have experienced this problem with different document templates.

When the merge has completed the document is fine. When the user prints the
document it sometimes corrupts certain areas of the document, this corruption
is shown by all the letters on one line being moved to the centre, almost
like typing over the same part without advancing horizontally across the
paper.

We have found a workround, by disabling UPDATE FIELDS in the printing
options. Our only problem is that we need this option enabled for other
documents. The strange thing is that the form fields which ARE in the merged
document are not affected by this corruption, only certain lines of normal
text.

We would love a solution to this.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I have not encounterd this particular problem before, but here are a couple
of guesses...

Which version of Word? Is it 2002 or 2003, and were these mailmerge
documents originally created in an erlier version of Word? If so, (and
perhaps whatever the case) I would be inclined to open one of the offending
mailmerge documents, select all the text, update the fields (F9), then save
the document. Then try using it in the normal way.

Are you using field types other than form fields (are you actually using
them?), MERGEFIELD fields and ADDESSBLOCK fields, and perhaps NEXT/NEXTIF
type fields? e.g., are you using IF fields? If so, it may be worth checking
the syntax as some things that seemed to work OK in earlier versions of Word
sometimes cause trouble in later versions.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Mark J Barefoot]

We are using Word 2003. The original templates were made in Word 97. I will
try your suggestions and let you know.

Thanks

Mark

 

[John R. Irwin]

Very interesting, I am having exactly the same problem with Word 2003. All
of my templates were made in Word 2003. I will try your suggestion about the
automatic update of fields but if you find any other cause for this problem,
I would appreciate hearing about it.