Mail Merge and Illustrator

[SamDavid1225]

I have designed a postcard in Illustrator for a client that requires 400 mailings. They wish to have the addresses printed directly on the mailer (verses using an adheasive label). Can anyone tell me how to do a mail merge using an Illustrator file. Would I have to do the mail merge in another software?? Any suggestions would be appreciated!!

 

[Eggles]

Mail merge - not a chance in Illustrator. I believe you can do them in InDesign (CS2?) and you certainly could in Pagemaker 7.

 

[dmacster]

I agree with Eggles - or save the file as an eps and put in another program to do the merge - with a text box - even could use word.

 

[kim00]

I don't know exactly how InDesign behaves, but I thought if you did a 400 person merge in Pagemaker it would give you a 400 page document. I'd stick with the .tif or .eps in Word. If I'm incorrect about PM please post.

 

[Eggles]

>>but I thought if you did a 400 person merge in Pagemaker it would give you a 400 page document. I'd stick with the .tif or .eps in Word. If I'm incorrect about PM please post. <<

Is there a question here?

How many pages are generated in a PM MM depends on how you choose to do the merge in the MM dialog box. You can choose to merge one record per page or multiple records per page.

 

[YNOTU]

Why not create a template to insert into word then just load the actual postcard on the printer and away you go... am I missing something here????

Unless of course you're trying to do the merge and print the cards at the same time. (which in my opinion would be crazy)

 

[SamDavid1225]

Thanks for your reply everyone. I will investigated your recommendations. Just to clarify, I'm looking to do a mail merge for the point of not having to type 400 different addresses into the design layout. You've given me somethings to consider. Thanks again.

 

[YNOTU]

SamDavid1225,
1. I would create in word file resizing the page to the size of the postcard

2. I would type the names and address etc... into excel bringing it into word for the word merge

3. Measure on your template where this information will go and place a text box in the word file adding each field from the word merge into it.

4. Load your printer with the stock and print away.

I think you have enough to take it from here. Good luck...

 

[Eggles]

December14th

>>am I missing something here????<<

I think so. The original poster has created a postcard that presumably contains design elements that are not possible to include in a Word document. Such as CMYK graphics, and/or file formats that Word cannot handle.

The alternatives offered by others assumes this and they have suggested grouping the whole layout and exporting it into a format that Word can accept. Personally I couldn't think of anything worse, as Word is notorious for flakiness with image placement.

But to sidetrack a moment -- you said:

>>2. I would type the names and address etc... into excel bringing it into word for the word merge<<

Why would you type the data into Excel then bring it into Word? Unless you already had an Excel file of the data, there would be no point in doing it this way. You can set up a simple database in Word itself for data input and use in mail merges.

The whole of your last answer assumes that the names and addresses are the only thing being printed -- what about the postcard design?