Slowing Printing with Publisher & Merged Database

[Young Tae Byun]

I am doing a newsletter that prints out customers addresses by pulling them
off an Excel spreadsheet. I have about 1200 records in the spreadsheet.

As the printer runs, it prints out each newsletter with one customers
address and then moves down to the next record.

The problem I am having is that it takes an extremely and I mean extremely
long time to print. 10 copies takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

My Publisher file is about seven megabytes. I am using Publisher 2003 and
Windows XP Pro SP2 printing to a Xerox 3535 creo Spire. The Spire shows the
file as being 900 MB for each 100 records printed.

You see if I do the print merge and start printing ... it'll print only 10
records at a time and then create another file for 10 records and each file
will be 700 MB. The Xerox creo Spire is running Windows 2K Pro. So I have
to go and delete each 700 MB before I run out of hard drive space.

If you can reply please reply back to (e-mail address removed). Thanks.

 

[Mike Bailey]

Young,

It sounds like you suffering from transferring a lot of data, although if
you have the “Print CMYK by default†box checked in ‘Advance Print Settings’
dialogue box (accessed from the ‘Print’ Dialogue box) this will make
Publisher print even slower. Note: you cannot access the ‘Advance Print
Settings’ dialogue box from a Merge publication, if you need to change it you
need to open a new Publisher file and go to the ‘Print’ dialogue box to
change it, then reopen your merge publication.

I’m not familiar with the Xerox Creo Spire, but I do know complex files
(lots of graphics) that are merged do get big and difficult to work with even
from Quark (using the Xdata plug-in), as PostScript level 2 ‘copy page’
semantics aren’t used. Depending on what your are doing (and it sounds like
it’s a simple merge with no graphics swapping) most front ends include some
sort of form capabilities, where you would RIP the static portion of the
document and place it on the server, the do the variable portion in a
separate document that calls that form. This is how I do it with our Cannon
using the Fiery front end. For our old Xerox DocuTech and our Heidelberg
9110 I use a ‘get tif’ statement buried in the PostScript stream (using an
EPS placed in the merge document) to grab a pre RIPped TIF from the Sun
station when the merge file is RIPped . Your Xerox rep should be able to help
you with details for your setup, also if you check the Creo web site they may
have tips on using the Spire for VIP (Variable Information Printing).