Claudia Drechsle wrote:
Hi Ross
I am creating a mail merge to address envelopes. I create an envelope
document, select a data source, place merge fields on the document, add
Hidden Paragraphs as needed, then run the merge. While the starting
document and the resulting merged document show one envelope "page" per
record, the page number display skips every other page (so when looking
at first page, it shows page 1, but when scrolling to the next visible
envelope "page" it shows page 3). Neither standard nor page layout
views show the blank page. I've checked for non-printing characters but
all I see is paragraph markers.
I never created envelope-pages, but your problem remembers a general
problem with page-formatting.
Is the option "only right" or "only left" activated in the page-format?
Or is it possible that while merging you get 2 pages per record (f.e.
when there are empty paragraphs at the end of the document)?
I replied earlier that I saw the same problem using only default page
style, and I can say that, in my case, I checked that I had left+right
page activated in page format, and nor were there any empty paragraphs
or page breaks etc. that might cause the extra page. My merge document
was a very simple single text-only page.
I see. And found the reason:
In the target-file put the cursor into the first paragraph of any of the
pages and open: format/paragraph/textflow.
You will find that there is not only activated "insert break" but also "with
page style". If you remove this and only leave "insert break" the empty
pages disapear.
But I think its more efficient to use the print-option for there is no way
to change the paragraph-format for all pages in one operation; each page
has to be changed manually, only multiselection would help a little bit,
but you have to chosse all the top-page-paragraphs one by one.
So I think, you're right: that's a bug as it is normaly not necessary to
specify the page style.
It should be the way, that one can choose if there must be used a special
page-style at the beginning of each new record or not.
Could you open an issue?
Thanks, Claudia. I tried your suggestion and it worked, but as you say,
I'd have to do it by hand for 220 pages or write a marcro to do that. I
still don't see any rationale for it to work that way by design, so I'd
love to hear from someone who can explain why it works this way.
Furthermore, having thought about this some more, it seems the mail
merge inserts a page break at the first paragraph marker (while this is
true of the first page, there ISN'T a blank page that prints BEFORE the
first record) in order to skip to a new page for each record. But I
don't see any such formatting at the END of the page, so I still don't
understand why the blank page occurs and why your fix works. I'd think
the mail merge would get to the page break and simply jump to the next
page. Unless the wizard gets to the next record and automatically
generates a next page without the page break character, in which case
having the page break inserted by default seems silly. Let users opt
for that, but leave it out by default.
Looking for clarity on this, and also a simple approach that any
simpleton like me could figure out. That's the only way OOo is going to
catch on with the main stream. All the fancy tools are great, but they
should be things the user needs to turn on. In fact, that's how M$ has
gotten into a ton of security trouble with their software.
Carl
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