printing mail merge

[Mike Yorke]

Hi,

We have a fancy multi-function photocopier that you can
sent print jobs to. the driver is feature packed and is
really flexible. Duplex, stapled, sorted etc is all very
easy. You can also do stuff like choosing which trays to
print from for the first and rest of pages within a
document.

The problem we have is when we create a mailmerge and
merge to a new document the printer driver doesn't
recognise the section breaks and therefore prints the
first page of the first letter on headed paper and the
other pages on plain. It'll then staple the whole
document as one, not the seperate sections.

Is there a way to get the driver to recognise the section
breaks? or to get Word to send the mail merge job to the
printer as seperate little print jobs rather than one
document with section breaks?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Mike.

 

[Graham Mayor]

If the printer driver doesn't recognize the section breaks, I guess you have
two choices.
1. If the driver responds to PCL or Postscript, you could force the issue
with PRINT fields.
or
2. Split the merge document into individual letters and batch print the lot.
http://www.gmayor.com/individual_merge_letters.htm

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Hi Mike,

As the document for each recipient is in a separate section, you can use:

Dim i As Long
For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.Sections.Count
ActiveDocument.PrintOut Range:=wdPrintFromTo, From:="s" & i, To:="s" & i
Next i

to send each letter as a separate print job.


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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Guest]

Graham,

thanks for the advice. This problem is causing me
headaches at our office so I really appreciate your
comments. I'm not sure what you mean with option 1
though.

Are you refering to the option within TOOLS > OPTIONS >
PRINT tab > and enabling the "FIELD CODES" option? what
does this do? I'm using both Word XP and 2003.

Cheers

Mike.

 

[Guest]

Thanks very much for the advice Doug. This seems to work
really well and is exactly the sort of thing I was
looking for.

When the macro runs it sends the jobs direct to my
default printer. Is it possible to alter the code to
make the regular print dialogue appear? This way I could
choose which printer the documents go to and any advanced
options like duplex etc. It would be handy if whatever
options I chose for the first letter were applied to the
rest of the letters too, rather than having to press OK
for however many letters I have in the mail merge.

Is this possible?

Mike.

 

[Graham Mayor]

No that's not it

You can insert print fields with which you can send commands directly to a
printer that understands them.
e.g. {PRINT 27"&l2S"} will force a PCL printer to use horizontal duplex
mode. Thus provided you know the commands that the printer understands, you
can add the appropriate print field to the pages of your merge document to
force the printer to take the paper from the appropriate bin. Unfortunately
I cannot advise you whether your printer uses such commands as you have not
told us what it is. Presumably it came with an instruction book?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Guest]

I see.

The printer is a RICOH 2035 (a photocopier which also
scans, faxes, prints).

I have tried the PCL5e, PCL6 and PS drivers but currently
I'm using the RPCS driver which is RICOH's own type.
happy to change if you think it'll help.

How do I find out which printer commands I'll need to
select trays? also, is it possible to enter commands for
advanced features of the printer like duplex or stapled
etc?

Cheers

mike.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

See the article "Getting names of available printers" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/AvailablePrinters.htm

and "Changing the selected (current) printer in Word without changing

the system default printer" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/ChangeCurPrinter.htm

As far as setting the options, see the articles at the following site by
fellow MVP Jonathon West

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=20


--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.


Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Graham Mayor]

On the face of it this printer will respond to PCL or PS commands issued
directly to it. For the full list of these commands, you will need to
consult the printer's documentation. The commands are in the form of 'escape
sequences' and will be listed similarly to
http://printers.necsam.com/public/printers/pclcodes/pcl5hp.htm. These can be
translated to the Word forms as the example I posted earlier.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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