On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 08:40 -0600, James Thompson wrote: > > > It seems they want a > > > mail-merge (which is really what we're discussing) to generate an > > > editable document for every record in the selection set. This does > > > not make sense, to me, as it is not efficient, and is totally > > > un-necessary. If you wanted to edit the documents, that _would_ make > > > sense, but most users will never edit the resulting documents, > > > especially if they are labels! All one needs is the template and the > > > > You can of course mail merge to a file. This results in one document > > being generated per page of labels. You can then edit them if required > > and print them ine page at a time > > These two behaviors were the reasons that prevented the office from switching > to OpenOffice.org over Word Perfect at my old job at a university. We were > wanting to upgrade older Word Perfect 6 installs to more modern software. > Our data entry people were not that great and getting proper information into > the proper fields. The secretaries wanted to quickly scan over the list of > labels prior to printing so they didn't waste expensive labels with mailing > names like James James instead of James Thompson.
The argument put forward here seems a little silly. The only reason for having this "multiple page" label idea, is so that that you can scan the labels with the completed data. However, this data is already visible to you in the datasource? Why can you not check to see if the name is James James or James Thompson in the datasource before printing? > The mail merge generating one file per record was horrible. For the same > reason as listed above. Having multiple files that each required handling > separately was unfriendly when merging 2000+ documents. Also, I believe they > liked to keep electronic copies of the mailings they sent out (form letters) > that were a snapshot in time, not effected by future changes to the database. > > I'm not saying they ever used these copies, but disk space is cheap and it > made them feel better. So, yes, it may not be efficient and it may be > unnecessary, but it was what the user wanted and could get from Word Perfect > and MS Office. Bottom line was that the perceived clunkiness and unfriendly > behavior of OO.org in dealing with labels and merges forced me to abandon > migration to it. When I left the only question left in the office was Word > Perfect or MS Office. The mail merge again, is not designed to be used with actual files, but instead with the "template" and datasource. I can, however, understand them wanting to have some snapshot of who was in the merge when it went out. This may be something to request as a feature - such as an audit report of records used, dates etc. Regards Jonathon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
