Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Four Postcards per page with Variable Data ????????

Status
Not open for further replies.

henrynlouisville

Technical User
Mar 28, 2009
2
US
I’m lost. I have no clue how to do what I need to do.
I use VBA to automate report runs for a living and no nothing about printing or printing software. When I fire up InDesign I don’t really understand any of the terms and features.

What I have:
Variable data in a text file
Xerox Phaser 4510N monochrome printer
110 lb Card Stock (200 gsm)
Evaluation copy of Adobe InDesign
Evaluation copy of Quark XPress 7.3/Print Collection

What I need:
I need to print four postcards per page. I will take the sheets to a mail house where they will cut each sheet into 4 postcards, affix postage, and mail. The data is only text - name, address, return address, and message.
The data is variable. I will print out 500 sheets at once. First I will print the mailing address. Then I will turn the stack over and print the message. The message has to match the person on the front.

Questions:
Will InDesign and/or XPress do this?
Do you know what software will?
Do you know the exact steps it would take to get InDesign to do this?

I’m really at a loss…
Thank You!
 
...yes, data merge allows some level of of variable data printing, the key to success in being how accurate the data you import is...

...with data merge i believe you would have to organize your data into two separate data files, data for front and then data for back being a different import...

...the other option is to use HP Smartstream instead, this allows automatic creation of the reverse, and is much more powerful:


andrew
 
Thank you for the HP software suggestion. I'll try it out.

Do you think that a software solution will handle printing 500 sheets or more at once(2000 postcards when cut). The printer might also have a memory issue with this size.

Someone mentioned that a printer with a built in VDP module would be better. Have you ever seen a small/medium business BW laser printer with this capability?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top