Large print jobs are out of sequence with mail merging?

[Tony]

Hi All, I am having a couple issues with large print jobs.
I am printing multiple cards on single pieces of index
paper. I am doing a mail merge of ~5000 address which must
stay in the exact order from the Excel list that they are
merged from. When I select "Print Merge" Publisher sends
one print job pre sheet of paper. Each job contains
multiple addresses as expected. The addresses per sheet are
printed in the right order all of the time. However the
jobs themselves somehow get out of sequence? I am not sure
if this is a Publisher issue or some print queue behavior
that I don't quite understand. The effect is that the pages
printed sometimes are out of order. Example: Instead of
pages printing in this order 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,... they
print something like this for example 1,2,3,4,6,5,7,8,9...
I have monitor the order of printing many times and the out
of sequence occurs randomly and changes each time I do a
large print job. Has anyone seen this or can anyone explain
why this is occur and how I might be able to fix it.

The second issues is that Publisher crashes routinely with
large print jobs?

 

[Mary Sauer]

Do you have the most current printer driver? Go to the manufacturer's web site and
look around.

 

[°°MS-Publisher°°]

Tony, the only way to achieve what you want is to do a SAVE AS in CSV (Comma Separated Value) and use that for your merge data.

If Publisher crashing is an issue for you with large merged print jobs, your best bet is to move to Serif PagePlus 10

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
Tony, the only way to achieve what you want is to do a
SAVE AS in CSV (Comma Separated Value) and use that for
your merge data.

I've tried using a CSV file for the mail merge but the
problem persists? The sheets are still printed out of sequence?

The system also exhibits very slow response to spool to the
printer. The system CPU is at 100% the whole job which
makes this application unuseable. This did occured with
Excel input files too. I found that I have to use very
small print merges 1-400 each time but this is very time
consuming when you have thousands of cards to print in
addition to resorting the sheets after they have printed.
Printing large batches (1000+) would cause the printing to
start after 15 minutes!

Do you know why the print sequence is occuring out of order?

I also tried to "Create a publication" instead of just
doing a direct "Print Merge" after reading in the CSV file
to see if that might solve the problem. However when the
publication was completed it created sheets with the same
address for each card? In other words instead of having
address 1,2,3,4 one each card on one paper sheet it creates
a publication with sheet 1 that had address 1 on all four
cards, sheet 2 that had address 2 on all 4 cards and so on?
Am I doing something wrong? This does seem to be a very
useful feature, is that what "Create Publication" is
supposed to do?

 

[printerdan]

I've tried using a CSV file for the mail merge but the
problem persists? The sheets are still printed out of sequence?

The system also exhibits very slow response to spool to the
printer. The system CPU is at 100% the whole job which
makes this application unuseable. This did occured with
Excel input files too. I found that I have to use very
small print merges 1-400 each time but this is very time
consuming when you have thousands of cards to print in
addition to resorting the sheets after they have printed.
Printing large batches (1000+) would cause the printing to
start after 15 minutes!

Do you know why the print sequence is occuring out of order?

I also tried to "Create a publication" instead of just
doing a direct "Print Merge" after reading in the CSV file
to see if that might solve the problem. However when the
publication was completed it created sheets with the same
address for each card? In other words instead of having
address 1,2,3,4 one each card on one paper sheet it creates
a publication with sheet 1 that had address 1 on all four
cards, sheet 2 that had address 2 on all 4 cards and so on?
Am I doing something wrong? This does seem to be a very
useful feature, is that what "Create Publication" is
supposed to do?

Been to the party your at, very frustrating.
If I understand, your attempting to print the same static image 4 up on one
sheet, AND with 4 dynamic name, address combinations.
You need to set up your fields with a "Next Record" field included as the
last field. I know for certain Word has this feature, haven't looked into
Publisher's support of it. ie <<First Name>> <<Last Name>> <<Address >>
<<State>> << Zip >> <<Next Record>> Next Record being a command to
Publisher to grab record number 2 form your source file.
You're crashing your print spool or server by sending the static, unchanging
design elements 1250 to 5000 times. Is this a complex image? Bear in mind
that with a merge document you are no longer sending a 1000 qty print job,
you are sending 1000 print jobs at once! We have a Fiery rip where we can
save this as a master and actually merge the dynamic data with our
background master.
What is your target printer? How complex is the design? Are you printing
straight to a printer with limited memory or a rip?
Given the worst case scenario, I would recommend printing the static
information first, than imprinting the merge stuff on top of it.

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----



Been to the party your at, very frustrating.
If I understand, your attempting to print the same static image 4 up on one
sheet, AND with 4 dynamic name, address combinations.

Yes that is correct.

You need to set up your fields with a "Next Record" field included as the
last field. I know for certain Word has this feature, haven't looked into
Publisher's support of it. ie <<First Name>> <<Last

<<State>> << Zip >> <<Next Record>> Next Record being a command to
Publisher to grab record number 2 form your source file.

Yes I am familiar with the Word feature and attempted that
with Publisher but it doesn't seem to support the 'next'
command? I can't find and Publisher specific documentation
that describe 'next' or anything similar to it.

You're crashing your print spool or server by sending the static, unchanging
design elements 1250 to 5000 times. Is this a complex

image?

Yes the image is rather complex.And so are most of the
images we produce.

Bear in mind

that with a merge document you are no longer sending a 1000 qty print job,
you are sending 1000 print jobs at once!

Yes we noticed that when we printed the front of the cards
only one job would appear in the queue (because is was not
mail merged) but then when we printed to back (mail merged)
it actually create 1 job for every 2 pages with the 8X5
cards and 1 job for every page with the 4x5 cards.

We have a Fiery rip where we can

save this as a master and actually merge the dynamic data with our
background master.
What is your target printer? How complex is the design? Are you printing
straight to a printer with limited memory or a rip?

I anm not familiar with Fiery rip?
As far as the printer I will have to get back on that I am
not at the Store.

Given the worst case scenario, I would recommend printing the static
information first, than imprinting the merge stuff on top

of it.


Yes we had thought of that but it would make our cost
margin too high to be able to sell the product.

Thanks for the response, I am interested in finding out and
researching more about the rip.