Merging photo fields in Publisher

[Joan]

Thanks in advance. I am a teacher, trying to create a monthly "Student of
the Month" publication that includes student photos. The info is all in my
Access Database, but I need to put out a monthly publication with pictures of
a student from each class (about 26 photos) who earned the "Student of the
Month" designation.
I am using Publisher to do a catalog merge with my Access database. One of
the fields I really need is a photo field. I have tried to follow the
directions about putting links in for the photos, but no matter what I do,
the actual pictures do not show up in my finished merged document. My text
fields show up, and the layout is perfect, but the pictures do not come into
the document. Any ideas? I am using Publisher 2003 and Access 2002.

 

[Ed Bennett]

Thanks in advance. I am a teacher, trying to create a monthly
"Student of the Month" publication that includes student photos. The
info is all in my Access Database, but I need to put out a monthly
publication with pictures of a student from each class (about 26
photos) who earned the "Student of the Month" designation.
I am using Publisher to do a catalog merge with my Access database.

Are the actual pictures in the publication, or text fields containing path
descriptors of image files on your hard drive?

 

[Mary Sauer]

This article will help...
Troubleshoot catalog merge
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP010380451033.aspx

 

[Joan]

I need the photos to show up in ACCESS too, so the photos are in my database,
but I also created a field in the database that I called "PhotoLink" where I
put the path to the photo files(which is in the same directory as the
Publisher document and the Access database.) When it wasn't working, I put
everything in the same directory so there would be no doubt about where the
merge should find the photos, but it still didn't work. I also tried putting
the photos in a directory under "My Pictures" and putting that path into the
link field. That didn't work either.

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[Joan]

Thanks Mary. I saw that article before and so I put my publication, data
source and photos in the same directory, but still don't see any pictures in
the merged document. I know I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know
what. Does it matter what I call the field in my data base that holds the
links to the photos?

 

[DK]

Hi Joan. I am having the same problem merging from Excel. Have tried
everything and I know I am not doing anything wrong. I have tried all the
things you mentioned on your previous posts and cannot get the photo to
display. If you found out anything please let me know.

 

[Joan]

I haven't found out anything yet. I'm wondering if I don't have full
functionality of my Publisher software yet because it isn't registered yet.
I have retail media and installation codes for media that is supposed to be
delivered to me. I don't know if that could be the problem, but I am
expecting my good media (that can be properly installed) within the next day
or two, so I will keep you posted. I don't think I am doing anything wrong,
but it must not be working for a reason.
Joan

 

[DK]

I thought of that and downloaded all the updates for office. The only thing I
can think of is maybe some add-in is missing. Anyway I have written to Mary
(seems like she works for Microsoft) to escalate the problem instead of
asking us to visit the assitance site as a solution.

 

[Ed Bennett]

Anyway I have
written to Mary (seems like she works for Microsoft) to escalate the
problem

Mary does not work for Microsoft.

 

[Joan]

Ed,
Do you have any other ideas of what could be wrong? Could it be that I
don't have full functionality yet because of the registration gliche? I
don't get any error messages at all - just no pictures show up.

 

[DK]

sorry I mistook MVP as a title at Microsoft. I am sending you the documents I
am working on so you can take a look. Sending to (e-mail address removed)

 

[Ed Bennett]

sorry I mistook MVP as a title at Microsoft. I am sending you the
documents I am working on so you can take a look. Sending to
XXXXX

Didn't I ask you NOT to post the address back to the newsgroup?

I munged the address for a reason - because if it is posted in plain text,
spammers pick it up and send me spam. It's not nice.

 

[Mary Sauer]

I sent this earlier, somehow it was lost in cyberspace.

The articles can articulate a solution much better than I can.

If you plan to merge photos into your final publication, you will need to type
either the file name or path for each picture file that you want to use in the
appropriate column or data field for each record. Do one of the following :
If you plan to save your picture files and your data source in the same folder,
type the file name for the relevant picture. For example: firstphoto.jpg.
If the picture files will be located in a different folder from the data source,
type the path for the relevant picture. For example: C:\Documents and
Settings\Username\My Documents\My Pictures\Catalog Project\firstphoto.jpg.

In Publisher's catalog merge expand the pull-down to insert as a picture.

 

[DK]

Joan
I think I figured it out. Mine is working now. The changes I made was I went
to the folder where all my photos were right clicked to look at properties
and noticed the READ ONLY was checked. I unchecked that and most of my photos
mergerd fine. The few that did not worked was because they were a different
format Bitmap vs Jpeg so I changed the extentions in my source document and
that fixed it. Hope this helps

 

[Joan]

Mary,
Thanks so much for your additional pointers.
DK,
I finally got mine to work too.
To All who Responded to my posts:
Thanks for your answers and discussions. I finally got it to work. I looked
at my table in Access and realized that I assigned the wrong data type to the
field where I had the photo links. I used "hyperlink" and that was jazzing
everything up. As soon as I changed the datatype of my field in access to
just plain text, it all worked fine. It was such a stupid mistake that I
made a very easy thing difficult.
I'm very pleased that this is working!
Joan