Mergeing as a directory last record losing data

[Dave Elsen]

We have daily letters we send out with a person's signature along with their
title at the bottom of the page. Whenever we merge these letters using a
directory, the very last page of the batch of letters, the signature and
title never prints. Even if there is only 1 record for the batch that
signature and title never prints. We wind up cutting a pasting that part from
another letter to the last one. Can some please help. Thanks.

 

[Dave Elsen]

Hi Cindy. Thanks for replying. Okay this may be a little bit long but I will
explain further. First we are using WORD 2003. The letters we are sending out
are to students who have some missing credentials that the school needs. So
every night there are data files (text files) that get produced with the
students data in them. At the end of each record is the missing credential
information. A student can have more than 1 missing credential. If that is
the case the student has multiple records in the data file. The only
difference on each record would be the next missing credential data that is
needed.

The person that set this up for us is gone so I can't contact them on it.
The way they set it up is we have the basic text of the letter with
MERGEFIELDS inserted for the fields from the data file. At the very top of
the letter is the WORD code of:

{ If {MERGESEQ} = "1" " (the text of the letter follows)........

At the bottom of page 1 of the letter the WORD code is:

{ SET Place1 { =ID+Application_Number} }
{ If { Place2 } <> { Place1 }

Then comes the signature and title

Now on the 2nd page of this letter is the exact same text and mergefields,
EXCEPT it does not have the { If {MERGESEQ} = "1" " part at the top.
And at the very end of code is:

{ SET Place2 { =ID+Application_Number} }

But now there is no signature and title at the bottom of this page.

I merged this as a letter and the last record still does not have the
signature and title on it. Also if you merge this as a letter, if a student
has more than 1 record in the data file (1 for each missing credential that
is needed), then what happens is each missing credential text appears on a
separate page. So if a student has 3 missing credentials then their letter
would be 3 pages and page 2 and 3 would only have one line of text on it. So
this is why we have to merge it as a directory.

I hope I explained everything well enough. It would be easier just to send
you the actual letter, but then if someone else is experiencing this problem
they wouldn't be able to look at the letter. Thanks.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Take a look at http://cornell.veplan.net/article.aspx?&a=3815 to see and
example of this type of merge with an explanation of the purpose of each
field that is used.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Dave Elsen]

Doug,

Thank you for the suggestion. I took a look at it and we have our letter set
up with the same structure , especially at the very end of their example. So
it wood be interesting to see if their example gets the same results as we
are getting where the very end of the last page (in this case the signature
and person's title) doesn't print.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

When I use that method, I get a bit of superfluous information after the
(complete) for the last record in the data source. The superfluous
information is the opening part of the letter without any data being merged
in it. It's easier to delete it that worry about.

I however have only ever used this when showing other people how to do it.

My preference would be to use a Report in Access or, if the nature of the
job warrants it, a "roll-your-own" equivalent to mail merge using VBA. I
have one of those going at the moment for an agency of the US Government
that inserts two sub-levels of data for each primary level of data, drawing
the information from three tables in an SQL Server Express database.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP