Section breaks in label merge new document (Word 2003)

[Matthew Lemin]

A friend has a major problem with a 250 page label mail merge document. He
needs to change some page layout settings for the whole document but it is
only letting him change the first page. When he tries to "apply to whole
document" it comes up with a "fix margins" box that won't go away unless he
applies it to the current section only. I have replicated this on my own
computer as well. It uses standard A4 Avery label 7165 (parcel label).

I noticed that each page is separated by a Section break (next page). So I
decided to try and use "find and replace" to replace all the section breaks
with page breaks. This did not work as although it would find the section
breaks it just would not replace them with page breaks - it basically just
ignored my command.

So, in order to get this to work he now has to manually delete every section
break at the end of every page of 250 pages!

He does one of these mail merges every week - and does not fancy going
through this process every time. He has Office 2000 on his home machine and
this works fine.

Is there any way to
a. get Word to separate pages with a page break rather than a section break
b. force Word to replace the section breaks with page breaks, or
c. create a document with automatic page breaks?

All help gratefully received.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What happens at print time if he clicks "Ignore" when the "Fix margins"
message appears?

The problem with the section breaks is likely to be that there is nothing
between the table on one page and the table on the next except the section
break. In that case, Word may not do the replacement.

If you can add an extra paragraph mark before the table without upsetting
the label layout (I don't know if it's possible in this case, but perhaps
you could format the paragraph mark font size as 1 point) then re-execute
the merge to a new document, you should be able to do a global Edit|Replace
of ^b by ^m.

Best I can do for now.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Matthew Lemin]

Many thanks for your help with this. In the end the workaround was more
straightforward.

What was happening was there were margin and printer tray selection problems
in the (for want of a better word) prototype merge label document. These were
being reflected on every seperate section (page) of the final "merge to new
document" document. He tried to fix the problems in the final document by
applying the "page setup" options to the whole of the document (all 250
sections) but Word would not let him do this, it was only permitting him to
change it one section at a time.

By introducing section breaks he was unable to print a couple of pages as a
test because each page was effectively "page 1" of a new section and
therefore asking it to print, say, pages 1-4 would prompt it to print the
whole document because each page was effectively "page 1" (doh...!)

He tried to fix this by deleting the section breaks between each page, but
Word would not let him do this either. I caught him just as he was about to
throw his laptop out of the window!

The solution was to fix the "page setup" margin and printer tray options in
the prototype document before he proceeded to merge to new document. The
fixed margins and printer trays were now reflected in each section and the
document printed as planned.

As an aside, before we found this fix, he had sent the problem 250 page
document home by e-mail. He opened it up on his home computer in Word 2000
and it printed fine with no problems. It also permitted him to delete the
section breaks and to make changes to all of the sections at once. These are
all problems that have been introduced with Word 2003. Mail merge is the
main reason he uses Outlook and Word. As you can imagine, he is not very
amused!

He is seriously considering scrapping Office 2003 and reverting to Office
2000 as he has yet to find any advantages at all in the newer version.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Word 2003 is inherently more stable that 2000 which is as good a reason as
any to use it - and Outlook 2003 is much improved (and not backward
compatible if he has updated the data file to 2003 format).

Mailmerge is one of the bigger changes and some would say not for the
better, but it is possible to work around all the problems. You will find
several merge related pages on my web site - of which
http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm and
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm are the most
immediately relevant.

Each page of a label merge or each record of a letter merge is a new
section. This does not stop the printing of an individual page or range of
pages. The sections can be addressed in the print pages dialog - fully
explained in Word help.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Peter Jamieson]

Useful feedback, thanks.

BTW you can print multiple sections by specifying s1-s250 or maybe
p1s1-p1s250 in the print dialog box.

A lot of people face that Word 2000-Word 2003 chasm, unfortunately.

Peter Jamieson