Lost formatting in nested doc in merge

[Julia]

Hi-
I am using Word 2007 to generate letters from a 3rd party program via the
merge feature.

There is a library of letters the user can choose from in the other
software. Multiple letters can be selected, and put in a queue. The user also
chooses record(s) to run the merge on.

On the Word side, I open a "standard" template which contains fieldcodes for
all of the data fields and run a macro which does the following:
1. Loads the record data fields into memory
2. Nests the letter template(s) into the "standard" template based on a
field code which references which letter(s) should be used.
3. Populates the fields in the letter(s) based on the data loaded in step 1.

Generally, this works fine. However, I now need to generate a letter that
contains a first page in portrait mode, second page landscape; plus a
watermark that does not print on the first page but prints on subsequent
pages. I have created a letter template with these features, and if I do a
manual merge, it runs fine and looks great. However, if I do the merge the
automated way through the macro, I lose the special formatting in my letter-
I suspect because the formatting in my "standard" template is overwriting it.

I know this is really complicated. :-( Anyone have any ideas how to preserve
the formatting in a nested document in a merge?

TIA-
Julia

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Formatting details such as page orientation, headers and footers are stored
in Section Breaks or the final paragraph mark of a document. Possibly if
you put a Continuous Section Break at the end of your letter template, those
details will be retained.

If you showed the code of the macro, it might be possible to offer other
advice.

From your description of the operation, I am guessing that this sysem is
probably mostly used for creating mutliple letters with differing content
from just the one record. If that is the case, mail merge may not be the
best way of doing it.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Julia]

Hi Doug-

I have tried putting in a section break at the beginning and end of the
document, and the results were better, but still not optimal.

I ran the merge manually in Word to see if the issue was the output from our
software or something in Word. I found that running the merge manually gave
me output with the correct page orientation (alternating portrait/landscape),
but it seems once the watermark was "turned on", it did not get turned off
when going from one record to the next.

Any ideas?

Also, FYI merge from our software is for multiple letters from multiple
records...

TIA-
Julia

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I am not sure that putting a Section Break at the beginning is necessary,
and it may be better without it, but I think that the Watermark issue may be
solved if in the mail merge main document, you go to the header of the last
Section of that document (the one after the Continuous Section Break and you
unlink the header in that Section from the header in the previous Section.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com