Footer moves up on page in merge

[LauraLee]

I have a merge document where the letterhead is a picture and text in the
header and text-only in the footer. The merge document is a single page with
very small margins (0.25 top and bottom). I'm merging from an Access database
into documents, a few at a time from a list of recipients (so, I'll merge the
first 2 records into a document, then merge into another document with the
next 3 records, and so forth).

Most of the time when I merge, all goes well. Now & then, though, the footer
on the last page of the merge "moves up," which moves text at the bottom of
the page onto a new page.

I'm stumped because if I exit from Word, then re-open the document, I can
usually get a merge to work properly that had just failed -- with no changes
to the merge document.

Any ideas?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TGF1cmFMZWU=?=,

Interesting... You don't mention the version of Word involved? (Not that I think
it makes any difference, in this case, but it's always good to know...)

My best guess would be that the merge document may be slightly damaged, and that
something is triggering this change to the footer, at some point.

If you copy/paste the document text - without the last paragraph mark - to a new
document, reconstruct the header and footer (you can copy the content across),
are things more stable in this new document?

Note: it would probably also be a good idea to rename Normal.dot to Normal.OLD,
first. Then, when you start Word, it will generate a pristine copy of Normal.dot
so that any new documents will be as "clean" as possible.

I have a merge document where the letterhead is a picture and text in the
header and text-only in the footer. The merge document is a single page with
very small margins (0.25 top and bottom). I'm merging from an Access database
into documents, a few at a time from a list of recipients (so, I'll merge the
first 2 records into a document, then merge into another document with the
next 3 records, and so forth).

Most of the time when I merge, all goes well. Now & then, though, the footer
on the last page of the merge "moves up," which moves text at the bottom of
the page onto a new page.

I'm stumped because if I exit from Word, then re-open the document, I can
usually get a merge to work properly that had just failed -- with no changes
to the merge document.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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