MailMerge prints out of order

[Paul]

My customer reports that labels print out of order, in seemingly random
fashion. Typically they will see 1,2,3,4,5 then 15,16,17 then 6,7,8 etc.
Usually all labels eventually print but keeping them in order is critical.
The data source is a SQL Server view that contains an ORDER BY clause.

Any ideas?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

No particular ideas but
a. which version of Word, and how are they connecting to SQL Server (should
not make a difference, I know...)
b. does the Customer get a chance to look at the Mail Merge Recipients
dialog box (Word 2002 or later), or is the merge automated? If they do get a
chance, is the seqeunce the same as the sequence in the view or the seqeunce
that they see in the printout? Could they have changed the sequence in the
Mail Merge Recipients box (e.g. by clicking at the top of one of the
columns?

Peter Jamieson

 

[Paul]

Peter-

Word 2000
Using an ODC file
Merge is automated and they don't see it.

The "mixing" order varies from time to time.

Paul

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The "mixing" order varies from time to time.

That's always worrying.

I don't know what is going wrong & the only potential workaround I can think
of at this point is to ensure that the mail merge main document's
querystring also does an ORDER BY. You could try doing that in an
OpenDataSource or by setting ActiveDocument.MailMerge.DataSource.QueryString
(However, you should only need to do that /once/ then save the mail merge
main document, assuming that the query is not being changed again when the
mail merge main document is opened.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Paul]

I'll try that, but I'm thinking more along the lines of old printer drivers,
spooling problems, or something else at the client's site.

Thanks,

Paul

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Yeah, I had a few thoughts along those lines but nothing obvious sprung to
mind. "Something else" is open-ended, of course. When I first looked at your
example, I thought the Customer might be seeing
1,2,3,4,5,11,1,2,13,14,15,6,7,8,9,10 and that it might be something to do
with the Page Setup (e.g. it could have been set up for duplexing), but
1,2,3,4,5,16,17,18,6,7,8 doesn't quite fit that bill.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Paul]

The order seems to contain random groups each of which is properly
sequentially ordered, eventually comprising the whole set of pages/labels.

That, plus a post somewhere claiming that Mailmerge sends out each page as a
separate file, made me think of spooling/printer driver errors in splicing
the chunks together.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

That, plus a post somewhere claiming that Mailmerge sends out each page as

a
separate file, made me think of spooling/printer driver errors in splicing
the chunks together.

FWIW I wouldn't rule any possibility out without some kind of proof but the
thing about Mailmerge is that one of its traditional problems is that it
does /not/ create separate print jobs for each letter. It's possible that
changed in Word 2007 - I haven't checked. (Not that it makes any differnece
to anything we have said so far, but going back a couple of messages, you
say "Word 2000" and ".odc", but Word 2000 can't use .odc files so I'm
guessing it's a later version of Word...)

Peter Jamieson

 

[Paul]

. . . On to other theories, I guess . . .

FWIW I wouldn't rule any possibility out without some kind of proof but the
thing about Mailmerge is that one of its traditional problems is that it
does /not/ create separate print jobs for each letter. It's possible that
changed in Word 2007 - I haven't checked. (Not that it makes any differnece
to anything we have said so far, but going back a couple of messages, you
say "Word 2000" and ".odc", but Word 2000 can't use .odc files so I'm
guessing it's a later version of Word...)

Peter Jamieson