Section Breaks in Mail merge docs

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Charles Kelland - 11 Mar 2004 16:11 GMT

I am using Continuous section breaks to control headers
and footers in a mail merge document. The problem I
encounter is that Word substitutes a New Page section for
the Continuous page section when I do the merge - so the
output docs have inappropriate page breaks.

An added complication, which I'm not sure has any bearing,
is that the main doc contains 'conditional paragraphs'
stored in bookmarks, and some of these paragraphs have
section breaks in them. This is all driven by a 3rd party
application which decides what the output should be for
each customer and selects the appropriate
bookmarks/paragraphs, merges with data and outputs
accordingly. Consequently, some of the output docs have
only one section break, some have several. Word seems to
substitute the last section break on the first page with a
New Page one.

Has anyone else encountered this or similar problem, and
found a workaround?

I would be very grateful for any advice!

Charles.

Reply to this Message

Doug Robbins - Word MVP - DELETE UPPERCASE CHARACTERS FROM EMAIL ADDRESS - 12 Mar 2004 03:31 GMT

If the purpose of the section break on the first page is so that you can
have a different first page header/footer in the document, then that is not
the correct way to do it as it can be done by checking the different first
page box under the layout tab of the PageSetup dialog.

If that is not the reason for the section break, then it may not be so easy
to eliminate it and I would be asking why the third party application is
relying on mailmerge rather than inserting the information for each customer
into the document itself.

Signature

Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

>I am using Continuous section breaks to control headers
> and footers in a mail merge document. The problem I
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>
> Charles.

Reply to this Message

Sandy - 15 May 2004 22:37 GMT

How many pages is your originating document? If its one
page, and you are merging to several recipients, it
automatically inserts continuous section breaks, which is
not the correct way, as indicated. Control the
headers/footers with the "different first page" selection
or, there is also a selection for "same as previous".
Otherwise, if the document may have variable pages (ie if
you insert extra text) I will do my main document with
a "dummy" second page and then deleted prior to save of
the template, which contains the correct information for
the header/footer.

>-----Original Message-----
>I am using Continuous section breaks to control headers
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
>
>.

Reply to this Message