Mail Merge Printing - Series of Addresses Skipped

[sjconcord]

Hello All,

I recently tried to print about 500 postcards with addresses using Mail
Merge from Publisher 2003. I sent the print job over my network to a
Minolta 5430DL. After the job completed I found about 100 postcards
missing. It appears that the first 192 were printed fine, then the
following pattern emerged:

postcard 193-212 NOT PRINTED (20 cards)
postcard 223-232 NOT PRINTED (10 cards)
postcard 253-272 NOT PRINTED (20 cards)
postcard 283-292 NOT PRINTED (10 cards)
postcard 313-322 NOT PRINTED (10 cards)
postcard 343-362 NOT PRINTED (20 cards)
postcard 383-392 NOT PRINTED (10 cards)

Anybody know why a series of 10 or 20 postcards would intermittently
not print from the batch of 500? I was able to print these ranges
indiviually after the problem was discovered. I don't know why they
were skipped during the big print job.

I spoke to Minolta and they think it is an application issue. I tend to
agree, but I can't be sure.

I would appreciate any insight into the likely cause of this, and a
suggested resolution so it does not happen again.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Ed Bennett]

I spoke to Minolta and they think it is an application issue. I tend
to agree, but I can't be sure.

As odd as this problem is, I would tend to doubt that it is caused by
Publisher (and printer manufacturers will *always* blame unidentified, and
normally identified, problems on the application)

I would suggest changing your batch size in Publisher to 500 - use the
Registry Fix (courtesy of KATMA, who will forever live above this quote if
nowhere else)

Open registry using regedit.exe

Go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Publisher\Printing

Create new "string value" called:
NumberOfRecordsPerBatch

Double click and set the value to 500

 

[sjconcord]

The problem turned out to be the printer. There is something wrong with
the network card implementation; it drops requests if it gets too many.
I guess printing uses UDP and not TCP? Hooking up to the printer using
USB works fine.

I switched to a much cheaper Okidata C5150N and have had no problems
with printing.