Printing several copies of a small document on a single 8.5 x 11 paper?

[Wallyxj]

Thanks Suzanne:
I tried your technique and it worked fine however, there seems to be a
limitation. The "envelopes and labels" screen for entering text doesn't
allow such features as spell check, advanced formatting, etc.

Nevertheless, I actually have a substantially different situation then
described in my original post. So let me try to elaborate.

I am a teacher and keep my students' grades on an Excel spreadsheet. There
was a need for me to send notices home for my 50 students regarding their
grade. So I used the spreadsheet as a data source and performed a mail merge
with three data fields (first name, last name, grade) and some general text.
Fifty short individualized letters were created and I wanted to print two
letters on each 8.5" x 11" of paper. I tried various page setup and print
options but couldn't get it to work.

Considering the time I expending trying to accomplish this task, it would
have been more cost & time effective to have printed each letter on it's own
8.5" x 11" sheet. It's just frustrating! What did I miss? I notice that each
letter is on different segments of page 1. Does this have something to do
with my difficulty?

Wally

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP - DELETE UPPERCASE CHARACT]

What version of Word are you using?

The later ones have the ability to print 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 or 16 pages per
sheet. If you execute your mailmerge to a new document and then print that
document selecting the 2 pages per sheet option in the File>Print dialog,
you should have what you want.

--
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

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

As Doug says, Word 2000 and above can print multiple pages per sheet, but
you probably would not want to do this through the Print dialog, as that
reduces the pages. Instead, you might experiment with the "2 pages per
sheet" option in Page Setup, which formats each full sheet into two logical
pages from the outset.

Another approach is to use a Labels mail merge with the label size set to
half a sheet. Note that when you are creating labels, you are not limited to
what you can enter in the Labels dialog. If you click the New Document
button, you get a full sheet of labels that you can spell check and treat
just like any other document. It's set up as a table, though, which can
limit some layout possibilities (no snaking columns, for example), and
you'll need to have table gridlines displayed (Table | Show Gridlines) in
order to see the label boundaries. For a 2-up merge, you'd be better off
using the "2 pages per sheet" Page Setup option if available; otherwise, you
can use a Catalog/Directory merge, set up so that just two records will fit
on a page.

 

[Wallyxj]

Thanks Suzanne and Doug:
I've tried your techniques with only limited sucess although I did learn
some new things. It seems the easiest thing to do to accomplish my objective
is to use paper stock in that measures 8.5" x 5.5". Then go to File/Page
Setup/Paper and set it to that custom size, do the mail merge and then print
normally.

Perhaps I'm just dense.....but it doesn't appear that Microsoft Word is
designed to be user friendly for creating multiple smaller pages within
standard 8.5" x 11" paper.
Wally
PS Suzanne? Is Catalog/Directory merge (from your reply) the name of the
label mail merge you were describing?
PS Doug..I'm using Office 2003

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

PS Suzanne? Is Catalog/Directory merge (from your reply) the name of the

label mail merge you were describing?

No. There are several different types of mail merge:

Letter: Each record is printed on a separate sheet of paper (or more, as
required). Word inserts a "Next page" section break between letters.

Label: Word uses your selected label format (which sets the page up as a
table) and merges one record to each label. Each sheet of labels produced is
a separate section.

Envelope: Word merges one record to each envelope, with section breaks
between.

Emails and faxes I haven't used, so I'm not sure how these work, but
presumably similar to letters.

Directory (Word 2002/2003; called "Catalog" in earlier versions): This is
the one you use when you want more than one record on a page but in a more
freeform arrangement than labels would permit (you can use tables with one
record per row, snaking columns with one record per paragraph, etc.). As the
name implies, this is useful for address or phone lists, but it's what you
use for any type of layout in which you need to accumulate data from
multiple records on a page (usually as many as will fit). Any static text
you include (except what's in the header or footer) will be repeated for
each record, so you have to merge the document before adding titles, column
headings for a table, etc. This can be really useful, though, and it's the
type of merge I probably use most often.