Stop merging at the end of records - Word 2003

[Jared]

Hi,
I have a list similar to this
<<next record>> firstname lastname ________ ________

This is to make a list of names that people can then sign in against.

The problem is that if I fill the page as above then when it actually merges
I get only get about 12 or so on a page and then it starts a whole new page
with 13+ etc. Also the rest of the page past the end of the merge data
records is just filled with lines. What I would like to get is a some way to
create a mail merge which (a) takes the names and puts the lines next to it,
(b) fills the page fully and then goes onto a new page if requested, and (c)
does not fill the remaining space on the page with _____ _______

Thanks a lot
Jared

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Change the merge type to be "Directory" (in Step 1 of the Mail Merge Wizard
or using the leftmost button of the Mail merge Toolbar, which you can enable
in Tools|Customize.

Then get rid of the <<Next record>> fields

Peter Jamieson

 

[Jared]

Hi Peter,
I tried this but now all it does it print 20 sheets - each with the only one
name instead of 1 sheet with 20 names. I don't have a fixed number of
people on each list but there must be some way to get word to only print the
number of names that are actually avaiable going onto the next sheet of paper
only when the first is full, no?
Thanks
Jared

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It should work, but let's just go through the steps and start from scratch.
First, I would enable the mail merge toolbar.
a. start with a blank new document
b. click the first button in the mailmerge toolbar and select Directory
c. click the second button in the toolbar and select your data source
d. select the field or fields you want on each line from the dropdown on
button 6 (just before "Insert Word Field") and insert them
e. draw whatever underline you want using e.g. underscores
f. lay out the line as you want it (probably using tabs to align the start
of the underscores)
g. add one paragraph mark at the end of the line (i.e. when you click the
Show/Hide icon near the right hand end of the standard toolbar, you should
see two paragraph marks in your document
h. click the "Merge to new Document" icon near the right hand end of the
Mail Merge toolbar and complete the merge
i. your output document should have what you want, nothing more, nothing
less. With any luck

My guess is that either you
a. have a page break at the end of your mail merge main document or
b. you are previewing each record and using the regular print facility to
print it.

Neither sounds particularly likely but there you go...

Peter Jamieson

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Or the paragraph is formatted as having a pagebreak before it.

I had a somewhat similar, but different experience today when a directory
merge in which the fields were not inserted into the cells of a table, when
executed ended up with only the last record being displayed in the document
that was created by the executing. To get all of the records to appear, I
had to insert the fields into the cells of a one row table.

This was with Word 2007.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Or the paragraph is formatted as having a pagebreak before it.

Good point!

I had a somewhat similar, but different experience today when a directory
merge in which the fields were not inserted into the cells of a table,
when executed ended up with only the last record being displayed in the
document that was created by the executing. To get all of the records to
appear, I had to insert the fields into the cells of a one row table.

This was with Word 2007.

Uh-oh!

I haven't explored Word 2007 merge issues to any great extent but FWIW
a. anyone using ODBC is likely to run into problems because the new ACE
driver dialogs (i.e. the equivalents of the Jet dialogs) seem to screw up
filenames. While I suspect few people are using that stuff deliberately now
at least some probably encounter the ODBC drivers when OLE DB connections
fail.
b. the whole business of Jet wildcards v. ANSI wildcards in queries (i.e.
*,? v. %,_) may be a problem for many. Both Jet and ACE OLE DB only
recognise ANSI wildcards. However, whereas it was possible to modify Access
2000 and 2003 databases so that /Access/ recognised ANSI wildcards, as far
as I can tell, Access 2007 only recognises ANSI wildcards in Access 2003
databases or earlier. You don't appear to be able to set ANSI wildcards in
Access 2007 format databases either manually (there's no obvious optin) or
programmatically.

If you have a good means of reporting this stuff to MS it might be worth
forwarding this message.

Best regards,

Peter Jamieson