repagination 3

[cramd2]

I have a huge MSWORD document, each time I try to print starting at a different section, the document repaginates. I've turned off repagination, (tools, options), I work in "normal" view - not print layout view, what else does a person do to prevent the repagination?
Even taking the option "go to page", will repaginate the document, on a large document, this is a real pain.
What is it about repagination that I don't understand? I am working with both Office 2000 & Office 2003, and can't control the repagination in either one.
cramd2

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

take a look in the header or footer and look at format page number. See if there is a selection to reset numbering on section breaks.

Skip,

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[cramd2]

Skip,
The only choice I have is
1) continue from previous section OR
2) start at....
either of which makes no difference with my pagination issue.
Thanks for the thoughts - any more??
cramd2

 

[tf1]

Turning off the pagination option stop Word from paginating whilst your are editing. When you print, Word must repaginate. It cannot be stopped.


Regards: tf1

 

[fumei]

tf1 is correct. This is because Word does NOT have a page object per se. Every page is calculated fresh. As tf1 noted, you can stop this in editing, but you can not stop it for print. Other wise Word has no idea what is on each "page" - which are really dynamic ranges.

Gerry

 

[cramd2]

Ok - if I can't turn off pagination, maybe there is something else I need to check that I'm not aware of. Here is the scenario, the document merges to a database with 6000 customers, after the merge completes I have one document with 6000 pages (each page ends with a continuous section break). We begin printing the docs and the printer now jams, so we try to print from the page/section where it ended and it takes a very long time to reposition the document to the starting position, sometimes the pc freezes while trying to reposition -(even on a pc with 1 gig of memory, MSWORD 2003). As it repositions, I watch the counter increase while it repaginates.
The MSWORD document is 43 meg - something this large, I guess I should expect to experience the issues thst I am having?
cramd2

 

[fumei]

(each page ends with a continuous section break).

Are you sure about that? A Continuous section breaks does NOT cause a page break.

so we try to print from the page/section where it ended and it takes a very long time to reposition the document to the starting position

Could to expand on that? HOW are you trying to print from the page/section where it ended? How are you even identifying that? Also, it is incorrect to use the expression "page/section", that is, if you are using Continuous section breaks.

That being said, it may, in fact be a good idea, with such a large print job, to explicitly break it up into sections.

6,000 pages?

Gerry

 

[tf1]

Ok. Instead of positioning the cursor, just use File, print and type in the page range. Note that because they are all sections, you need to use section numbers as well, such as:

s9p1-s39p1

which will print from Section 9, page 1 through to section 39 page 1.

I'm not sure how you are importing this database data, but it would probably work slightly better in Word if you were to import it as a single section commencing each record with the paragraph, PageBreakBefore set. Word will like that better than section breaks.




Regards: tf1

 

[fumei]

tf1 has a good suggestion, and it would work best using a explicit paragraph style. Say name it myPageBreak. Have it, as tf1 suggests, set as PagebreakBefore. Now when you bring in each record simply insert a paragraph with that style. It will always have a page break before it.

Gerry

 

[fumei]

Oh, another thought though....do you have headers and footers with this?

Gerry

 

[cramd2]

Let me give the steps, a legal sized document is created, it includes two sections, each section has it’s own margin & font settings. The document is now used as a “mail merge” document, once the merge is complete, it creates a 3000 page document with 6000 sections. Depending on the database it merges with, I may have a 6000 page document with 12000 sections. So we print, we print as: p1s1-p1s1000, giving us 500 documents, then the printer jams, and starts the issue of restarting at p1s300-p1s1000, and then the repagination occurs.

Once the mail merge is complete, the formatting marks, at the bottom of each page indicates “==========Section Break (Next Page) ==========.,

We have no headers or footers with these documents.

If I had one document, with 3000 pages, and try to eliminate these sections, would that be to our advantage?

Thank you for the suggestions, I will be testing this document with the paragraph styles.
cramd2

 

[fumei]

No, if you eliminate those sections all your text will run together.

You COULD replace the SECTION breaks with PAGE breaks, but I doubt it would make a difference.

The fact of the matter is Word repaginates when it prints.

Could you restate the question? In the original post it seems that it was an issue with starting to print in different sections.

Tell me, is it required to maintain this as one document? Would it be reasonable to actually break it into multiple documents. The mail merge could, and does, create the large document, but why not break it into smaller ones afterwards?

Gerry

 

[TonyJollans]

What you do may depend a bit on the ultimate destiny of the document - is it created just to print, or saved in some way afterwards? If it's created just for printing (and even if not), it may be quicker to recreate the bit you want to (re)print.

Regardless of that, a post on another site made me wonder whether there would be any benefit in hiding the sections/pages already printed. I don't have a handy 3000 page mailmerge to test on so it may take just as long - I just thought I'd throw it into the melting pot.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[macropod]

Hi cramd2,

I'd suggest:
. turn off the pagination option to stop Word repaginating while you're editing;
. copy the document from where the print problem was encountered to the end;
. paste that into a new document;
. close the old document;
. print the new document.
That way, you'll only have to put up with the print-time repagination of the bit that still has to be printed.

Cheers

 

[cramd2]

Gerry, my original intentions was to find out how to turn off the repagination, I now understand if I want to print, MSWORD is going to repaginate. So now I'm trying to find a way to work around the repagination. The operators that try to print this document has fits when they are trying to find starting and stopping points of this print job. And sometimes our documents are larger than 6,000 pages....is this too much for MSWORD to handle??
For testing, I opened my large document, selected CTRL+END to find the bottom of my page and after eternity, I finally made my way to the bottom as MSWORD did the repagination. When I finally reached the end, I noticed the status bar displays
"Page 1 Sec*** 6000/6000",
this confuses me, since I have 6000 pages, why it displays as Page 1 and not Page 6000??
For the second test, I changed the view to read layout, after MSWORD repaginated again, once the page count exceeded 20,000+, I cancelled out, never knowing when this was going to end.

For your questions: "Tell me, is it required to maintain this as one document? Would it be reasonable to actually break it into multiple documents."
This document is created for printing only and I think it is imperative to break this document up to avoid this repagination issue, and also the locking up of MSWORD when the repagination occurs - sometimes ending with the non-responsive MSWORD application.

As for Tony's comment..."Regardless of that, a post on another site made me wonder whether there would be any benefit in hiding the sections/pages already printed." --and how do I do that? I have the document to test on.

I keep wondering if this was a document with pages only, no sections, would I have these issues, could I possibly create the document another way without the mail merge that inserts the "Section Break--(next page)"?

Many thanks for your helpful posts!
cramd2

 

[SkipVought]

"Page 1 Sec*** 6000/6000",

See my post of 22 Jul 05 16:08

There is a control to reset the page numbering or NOT on a section break.

Skip,

_{[red]Be advised:[/red]We know Newton's 3 Laws. But did you hear about the [red]FOURTH???[/red]
Only ONE fig per cookie!}

 

[TonyJollans]

Hi cramd,

1. The page number ("Page nnn") shown on the status bar reflects the page number (as set by you) which will be printed on the page - following your mail merge, all your pages are 'Page 1'.

2. Hiding text, unfortunately, involves Selecting it - then Format > Font > Hidden (checkbox).

3. Thinking some more, can you not do your mail merge in smaller chunks? It would seem to be the simplest option.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[fumei]

OK.

1. If you are at page 6,000, and it shows as Page 1, then what is happening is that each of the Sections is starting at Page 1 again. Section breaks can either continue the page numbering from the previous section, or start page numbering at 1 (actually any number...).

Mail merges insert the breaks between elements. The break is normally a Section break Next Page - as opposed to a page break. Well, both are page breaks, but a SECTION break is a little different. In fact one of its main purposes is to be able to start page numbering again. That and headers and footers - but let's not go there...

2. Is too much for Word to handle? In theory, with appropriate hardware...no. In practice, I would personally say...absolutely. Break this thing up! If you do not absolutely require the file to be ONE file, break it up. Word has improved its memory handling - anyone remember Word 6.0? Shudder. However, considering this is not just a Word issue, as you are spooling this monster, IMHO the fact that you have an issue is a good enough reason to break it up into chunks. What size of chunks, and where to break it, depends on analysis of your needs.

3. Tony, if I am not mistaken, is making reference to the fact that hiding text removes that text from the paragraph collection. If it is not in the paragraphs collection it does not print. So what he means...I think...is to print a chunk, hide the chunk that is printed and therefore removing it from pagination.

Note, this does not change the number of pages in the document. If you have a 200 page document full of text, make it ALL hidden text, the Word count, Paragraph count etc returns 0...but the pages will still count out to 200. Although if you print it (with everything as hidden text) it will print out a single blank page.

Either of these can be done, but if you want to automate it (and i do recommend this) you will need to use VBA.

So, either break it up into chunked documents; OR
print it in chunks, hiding the printed chunks before going on to the next.

I do not have such a large document to work with, but I can do some tests on, say, a 500 page document.



Gerry

 

[cramd2]

Skip,
I keep trying the options NOT to reset on a section break, but after the merge, I still end up with Page 1 Sec 180 95/95. (I’m testing on a much smaller merge).

Options:
Merging smaller chunks is definitely an option, an option that can be given to an operator to control the size of the merge.

Until these merges can be moved to VBA or a VB.NET application, (I definitely agree with your recommendation Gerry), I think the solution for now is to merge much smaller increments, instead of merging with the entire database, merge only manageable number of records.

Many Thanks for everyone’s suggestions, I will be
implementing some changes with our next merge.

cramd2

 

[fumei]

Until these merges can be moved to VBA

Huh? "Moved" to VBA???? Uh, this is not the way things are. You can use VBA right now to do stuff.

In fact, you can still do the full merge - as it is now. Just use VBA to either break up the document, OR use VBA to handle the printing in chunks, OR use VBA to both break the printing into chunks and use hidden text to control (somewhat) the repagination issue.

OR - as has been suggested, make a smaller merge.

Gerry