Word completes merge before printing

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Rob - 18 Sep 2006 01:28 GMT

Is there a way to force Word to begin printing before completing the full
merge?

If I merge from a spreadsheet of about 300 or so, each recipient is merged
before printing starts and it takes about 1 second for each recipient to
merge. This means for 300 it takes 5 minutes. I have spreadsheets with 700
or more recipients, which will take far too long before the print begins.
I can speed this up dramatically by merging to PDF, but I think Word should
be able to do this better (like Word Perfect).

Rob

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 18 Sep 2006 04:36 GMT

Check the Background Print setting under Tools>Options>Print.

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Hope this helps.

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

> Is there a way to force Word to begin printing before completing the full
> merge?
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> Rob

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Rob - 18 Sep 2006 07:08 GMT

Thanks for you reply Doug, but I did check that and it's ticked. It still
merges everything before printing. If I untick the check box it makes no
difference.

Rob

> Check the Background Print setting under Tools>Options>Print.
>
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>>
>> Rob

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Peter Jamieson - 18 Sep 2006 11:04 GMT

One problem with Word mailmerge is that when it merges to printer, it merges
everything as a sinlge jo (i.e. if it merged each letter to a new job this
problem, and some others, would probably go away).

The only thing I can suggest is that you ensure that your Printer Driver's
Properties|Advanced are set to "Start printing immediately". However, as far
as I know, that's already the default. I suppose you could set "print
directly to the printer" but I suspect that that's a bad idea these days.

Peter Jamieson

> Thanks for you reply Doug, but I did check that and it's ticked. It
> still merges everything before printing. If I untick the check box it
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>>>
>>> Rob

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Rob - 19 Sep 2006 00:35 GMT

Thanks Peter, but DARN!!

And I thought Word was so much more superior to WordPerfect....silly me!

Rob

> One problem with Word mailmerge is that when it merges to printer, it
> merges everything as a sinlge jo (i.e. if it merged each letter to a new
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
>>>>
>>>> Rob

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