PROBLEMS WITH PAGE BREAKS IN WORD MAILMERGE

[Patster]

Hi.

Having a problem with a mailmerge. The output file is produced ok but, after a few pages, the page formatting is incorrect. Essentially the first or sometime first and second fields of the next record are displayed at the bottom of the letter before the page break. Anybody seen this before. We're using Word97.

 

[Dreamboat]

Patster:

Does your main document have more than one page, and if so, did you use paragraph returns to get to the next page(s)?

This is NEVER good. Use manual page breaks (Ctrl+Enter) instead.

If you're still having this problem, I'd LOVE to take a look at that merged file and your mail merge main document. Sounds to me like the main document is not set up right.
Anne Troy
Dreamboat@TheWordExpert.com
Anne@MrExcel.com

 

[Patster]

Hello Anne.

Thanks for the response. However, after fishing about a bit, I've discovered that when they run the merge, the option to supress blank lines is selected. When this is switched off, the formatting behaves as it should and everything prints as it should.

 

[GeekGirlau]

Hi Patster,

Glad your document works, but do take Dreamboat's recommendation on board (pardon the pun!). The purpose of "suppress blank lines" is mainly to take care of situations such as any missing lines in address fields, where the address may consist of 3, 4 or 5 lines.

I'm a bit anti the manual page break in most situations (check out the paragraph formatting options "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together&quot, but it is always preferable to pressing Enter lots of times to force text to the next page.

PS: Great to see the formatting queen in action, Dreamboat!

 

[Patster]

Hi GeekGirlau.

Thanks for that. You, and Dreamboat, are quite correct. As usual it was a case of getting the thing working so the user could get out their jobs that can't wait. I'm pretty sure that supress blank lines is set by default, although they claim they've never had this problem before so we must've changed it (could be true I 'spose ) Thanks again.

Patster.