Is anyone using mail merge with a Ricoh LD160c?

[ratb]

We produce a monthly newsletter in Publisher 2003 (around 900 copies) and
send the production to our in-house Ricoh LD160c printer. No problem in this
process.

We have not been able to figure out how to make the mail merge process work
correctly. If we want to print 1 copy of the 900 using 1 selected record,
the mail merge works great (I do not have time to select 900 records one at a
time however). When we try to send even a test of 3 records, our production
ends up collating and stapling all three records into one single task (in
other words, 3 copies of the same newsletter stapled as one!).

We really feel this is more of a printer problem than a mail merge problem,
but we are not getting any help from the sources that sold us the machine.
Can anyone shed some light on this matter?

 

[Mary Sauer]

Take a look at this article
Publications are not individually collated and stapled when you use the mail
merge feature to print in Publisher 2003, Publisher 2002 or in Publisher 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891904/en-us

And perhaps this one too:
The Registry Fix
for changing the Mail Merge Batch Size
http://ed.mvps.org/Static.aspx?=Publisher/registryfix

 

[ratb]

Dear Mary,

I just wanted to send you an email letting you know that the mail merge with
our monthly 8 page publication (designed in Publisher) is now working like we
have been wanting it to work for the past 2 years.

I had actually printed off the article 891904 dated 7/27/06 that you
suggested, back in 2007. Everything seemed to be in order but we still
couldn't get the publicaton to print on the Ricoh LD160 without it trying to
combine all 900 records into one printout.......

I was working on the Ricoh LD160 yesterday when a CPN executive from Ricoh
walked in to "introduce" Ricoh products to us. After explaining the
situation to him, he made a comment that made me ask a question that had us
back at the computer making changes. Long story short: we were sending our
publicaton to the Ricoh printer to do a print job under Document Server as
instructed when we first purchased the LD160. We should have been sending
the publication to the Ricoh printer making changes on the pop-up print
screen as follows: "normal" print should have been the print job; chang the
Duplex box from "off" to "Booklet"; check the "non-reduction booklet" box;
click OK to "double-sized" paper of the document size; and turn on the staple
function!
Works like a charm.....

Publisher 2003 and mail merge can work great if you know how to make it
"talk" to the printer correctly. I should have been more aggressive in
getting a representative on-site from Ricoh and resolved this problem months
ago.

I do want to thank you for the advise you sent me and say that it will work
as long as someone knows how to correctly direct a publication to their
printer.

Many thanks!

 

[Mary Sauer]

Hello ratb,

I certainly appreciate this post from you. It isn't often we get a detailed
solution to problems. I will save this and publish it on my web page for others
with your type printer. Thanks for sharing this.