How to embed Postscript Printer commands successfully.

[ayanefan]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I am having difficulty embedding Postscript Printer commands within Office 2004 files on a Mac. Everything works great from Office 2003 on a PC but I need this on the Mac.
Basically, I use the Option-F9 command to open the {} (brackets) to embed PRINT commands to control the printer functions. I am trying to use this (works on the PC):

{PRINT \p page"grestore matrix currentmatrix<<\MediaClass (letterhead)>>setpagedevice setmatrix gsave"\p \*MERGEFORMAT}

This command is embedded in the header of the first page of the document and will force the Xerox 7345 machine to pull from the tray with Letterhead loaded.
I am using this because we are doing a mailmerge with the 1st page as letterhead and page 2 will be Plain paper. Sending the options using the driver results with the first page coming out on letterhead then the entire rest of the mailmerge on plain. Embedding the commands for Letterhead on page 1 and Plain on page 2 will eliminate this problem but we cannot get the proper format in Mac Word. We have the correct printer commands with the PDL reference guide.

Again, this works on the PC but not the Mac. We have tried the Xerox Driver, the Generic Postscript Driver and the HP 5si driver from the Mac and sill not go.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[John McGhie]

I don't have any suggestions: Mac Word simply hands the print job over to
the Apple OS X print subsystem and what happens next is out of its control.

The first thing to do is check to see if your PRINT field is actually
surviving the mail-merge process. Many fields do not, they are turned into
plain text. So you need to check the merge result to see if the print field
is still a field.

Also: Mac Word has some issues with printing: it's not very good at it.
There are reasons why this is so, but I won't bore you with them.

I suspect that Mac Word will send "Printer Control Information" only ONCE,
at the start of the job, and that would cause the issue. Mac Word seems to
have problems interpreting section breaks to the Print Subsystem. I don't
know why.

Obviously, this would not be a problem if you could send the print job as
multiple documents instead of as a single stream.

There is a command that will able you to instantly split the merge result
into individual documents. Let me know if you are interested in that...
(It's complex to explain, but simple to use...)

Hope this helps

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I am having difficulty embedding Postscript Printer commands within Office
2004 files on a Mac. Everything works great from Office 2003 on a PC but I
need this on the Mac.
Basically, I use the Option-F9 command to open the {} (brackets) to embed
PRINT commands to control the printer functions. I am trying to use this
(works on the PC):

{PRINT \p page"grestore matrix currentmatrix<<\MediaClass
(letterhead)>>setpagedevice setmatrix gsave"\p \*MERGEFORMAT}

This command is embedded in the header of the first page of the document and
will force the Xerox 7345 machine to pull from the tray with Letterhead
loaded.
I am using this because we are doing a mailmerge with the 1st page as
letterhead and page 2 will be Plain paper. Sending the options using the
driver results with the first page coming out on letterhead then the entire
rest of the mailmerge on plain. Embedding the commands for Letterhead on page
1 and Plain on page 2 will eliminate this problem but we cannot get the proper
format in Mac Word. We have the correct printer commands with the PDL
reference guide.

Again, this works on the PC but not the Mac. We have tried the Xerox Driver,
the Generic Postscript Driver and the HP 5si driver from the Mac and sill not
go.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[ayanefan]

Thank you John for the reply, it's unfortunate that this will not work the way I want.

I really would like to know the command to split the job in individual documents, this sounds like it will do the trick.

 

[John McGhie]

OK:

The Command is "Master Document>Add Document"

Here's how to use it...

1) Create your mail merge Main Document with one of the Heading styles
formatting the first paragraph in each letter.

Ideally, that paragraph would contain the addressee's name and the date.
This can be tiny text or hidden (white!) text. It will become the file name
of the individual document later, so whatever the text is, it must be unique
in the entire result document. No "funny characters" ‹ Word will truncate
the file name at the first character Word finds that's not allowed in a DOS
or Unix file name (so: no periods, slashes, underscores etc)

The style MUST be one of the built-in Heading series styles Heading 1 to
Heading 9. It does not matter which one. The formatting of the style is
irrelevant: only the style name is important, so you can format it any way
you like. You do not need any numbering.

For convenience, in this job I would use Heading 1, but it doesn't matter...

2) Run your mail merge.

3) Create a folder and move just the mail merge Result document into it.

4) Open the mail merge result document. Set your printer tray assignments
for First page and subsequent pages. SAVE the Result document (no need to
print it).

5) SELECT from the very FIRST Heading 1 style in the document all the way
to the last paragraph in the mail merge result document.

6) Without moving your selection, on the View menu, choose Outline View.

7) On the new toolbar that will appear, click the button that says Master
Document View. Another little toolbar, the Master Document toolbar, will
appear.

8) On the Master Document toolbar, click "Add Subdocument"

9) Save, and wait while Word saves several hundred documents (it will save
them to the same location as the mail merge main document).

10) Create an Alias (shortcut...) to the printer you want to use, and place
it where you can get at it (desktop?).

11) Select all the files in the Result folder except the result document
and drag them to the printer shortcut.

There! The job's done.

Once you know how, it will take you 15 seconds to do this The mail
merge result document is now practically empty. You can use it for
checking, or throw it away. If you close and re-open it, you will see that
it is full of section-breaks, two surrounding each letter. The actual text
of the letter comes from the individual files.

The printer tray assignments should inherit to all the subdocuments. If
not, you will need to use an Automator Action to print the subdocuments.

Hope this helps

Thank you John for the reply, it's unfortunate that this will not work the way
I want.

I really would like to know the command to split the job in individual
documents, this sounds like it will do the trick.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

Ooops... Left out an important bit:

In Step 5, it is important to accurately select the first paragraph
formatted with the heading style you want to use to divide the document.

Word reads the style name of the first paragraph selected, and creates a new
subdocument each time it sees that style name, in the rest of the master
document.

If you do not accurately select the paragraph, or it is not the first, or it
does not have one of the Heading styles; then it either won't divide the
document at all, or will divide it randomly...

Hope this helps

OK:

The Command is "Master Document>Add Document"

Here's how to use it...

1) Create your mail merge Main Document with one of the Heading styles
formatting the first paragraph in each letter.

Ideally, that paragraph would contain the addressee's name and the date.
This can be tiny text or hidden (white!) text. It will become the file name
of the individual document later, so whatever the text is, it must be unique
in the entire result document. No "funny characters" ‹ Word will truncate
the file name at the first character Word finds that's not allowed in a DOS
or Unix file name (so: no periods, slashes, underscores etc)

The style MUST be one of the built-in Heading series styles Heading 1 to
Heading 9. It does not matter which one. The formatting of the style is
irrelevant: only the style name is important, so you can format it any way
you like. You do not need any numbering.

For convenience, in this job I would use Heading 1, but it doesn't matter...

2) Run your mail merge.

3) Create a folder and move just the mail merge Result document into it.

4) Open the mail merge result document. Set your printer tray assignments
for First page and subsequent pages. SAVE the Result document (no need to
print it).

5) SELECT from the very FIRST Heading 1 style in the document all the way
to the last paragraph in the mail merge result document.

6) Without moving your selection, on the View menu, choose Outline View.

7) On the new toolbar that will appear, click the button that says Master
Document View. Another little toolbar, the Master Document toolbar, will
appear.

8) On the Master Document toolbar, click "Add Subdocument"

9) Save, and wait while Word saves several hundred documents (it will save
them to the same location as the mail merge main document).

10) Create an Alias (shortcut...) to the printer you want to use, and place
it where you can get at it (desktop?).

11) Select all the files in the Result folder except the result document
and drag them to the printer shortcut.

There! The job's done.

Once you know how, it will take you 15 seconds to do this The mail
merge result document is now practically empty. You can use it for
checking, or throw it away. If you close and re-open it, you will see that
it is full of section-breaks, two surrounding each letter. The actual text
of the letter comes from the individual files.

The printer tray assignments should inherit to all the subdocuments. If
not, you will need to use an Automator Action to print the subdocuments.

Hope this helps



This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]