Re: [libreoffice-users] On the subject of mailmerge...

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:25 AM, James Wilde
<james.wilde@sunde-wilde.com> wrote:
> In another email I said that I had given up on using mailmerge, since the labels never print out 
> as you want them to.  My problem is this:
I gave up on mail merges a long time ago because the interface for
creating just about anything was so arcane I couldn't use it, but that
was with OOo before LibO came along.

> I have a laser printer, Brother HL-5340D, excellent in all ways.  I print from a Mac running OSX 
> 10.6.6 and LibO 3.3.1.  I use A4 sized sheets with three columns and eight rows of labels.
:
> If any kind soul has a custom template which they think works with labels of this type, Avery 
> L7159 or ones which extend to the extreme left and right edges, and is willing to share it, I'll 
> give them, perhaps not gold, but undying admiration and gratitude.
Have you tried to use the pre-supplied labels in LibO?  I don't use A4
paper, and there are a whole bunch of "features" of the labels,
especially the 5160 (3x10) address label template, that just irritate
the hell out of me, they might be what you need.

Some of the mentioned features are:

1) Multi-page label sheets just don't work right - they tend to lose
whole labels in what I think was a random pattern that drove me up the
wall.  (I wound up doing multiple single sheets for my holiday address
labels.)

2) The label patterns are wider than the real labels on the sheet, so
I have to indent each column in order to get them to print without
losing a line or two of lettering off the left edge, sometimes in all
three columns.

3) The vertical alignment is tricky at best and I have to use blank
lines different font heights to get it right (a vertical
alignment/centering feature would be REALLY nice here...).

4) The mechanics of copying labels on the sheet are awful.  IIRC, you
have to copy into each destination label individually, and there is no
way to select a whole column, row or the whole sheet (or maybe just no
way to do so with the keyboard - I think the mouse select may work
here) and paste into them intelligently.  (The Avery label maker macro
set for MS Word used to do a lot of these things really well, but I
left Windows, Word and Avery behind as a standard word processing
environment a long time ago, and those labels, or pretty much any
other similarly formatted document, do not translate well between Word
and OOo/LO at all, in either direction.)

5) This also happens with the 4x20 format for small return-address
labels, but I have that one set up and working and I don't need to
mess with it as much.

> But basically, I think the mailmerge system could do with a good working over.  That, or the 
> instructions on how to use it, either manually or with the wizard.  Fortunately my labels are 
> only around 200, for our local gardening club, so I can cope with doing it more or less manually, 
> but it would be nice to be able to automatise it.
If it's anything like OOo's horrid mail-merge, I totally agree....

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