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

Most of the problems listed here with labels are not problems. The table 
style templates, available from worldlabel.com or in openoffice 
extensions, work great. The text is centered vertically in each label 
since they are table cells. It is very easy to change the top margin to 
adjust for your top margin for your printer. Simply do it through the 
page format for the top margin. For the left margin of each column, you 
just drag the top one and all of the cells below it will be the same. I 
first had a problem when printing multiple pages of labels from 
openoffice base. It would miss one database entry when it went to each 
new page. After following instructions on setting up the page, that 
problem was easily overcome. The labels print perfectly from the top of 
the sheet to the bottom of the sheet without the alignment problems you 
have with the Microsoft style and default style labels in openoffice, 
even if you are printing small, 60 label sheets filled with small text. 
A person using Microsoft Word doing that had major alignment problems on 
a 60 label sheet once the page was two-thirds printed. I put the 
information into OpenOffice with the table style label forms, and they 
printer perfectly. The table style templates are also very easy to paste 
data into multiple cells, or even an entire page, at one time.

On 03/01/2011 02:37 PM, MR ZenWiz wrote:
> 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....

--

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Don C. Myers
e-PRO Certified by the National Association of Realtors
Manager, Farm and Rural Property Division
*Coldwell Banker University Realty
*126 East Foster Avenue, State College, PA 16801
Office Phone: 814-237-6543 Fax: 814-237-6502
Home Phone: 814-422-8111 Cell Phone: 814-571-9518
Visit the Farm and Rural Property Division Web Site at 
_www.cbur-ruralproperty.com <http://www.cbur-ruralproperty.com/>
_View Don's Farm Web Site at www.myersfarm.com <http://www.myersfarm.com/>
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