Re: [libreoffice-users] Mailing labels from mail merge

I was contacted off list to discuss this not long after I was able to 
get the system to work.  See my reply below.  In short, I did eventually 
get it to work, but I have no idea why.  And the whole experience seemed 
a bit buggy.

First, I was able to build a merge letter with the wizard, once using an 
address block and then, after some struggling, I figured out how to add 
the merge fields directly and NOT using the wizard address block.  (Note 
that system is not at all helpful when starting with a pre-existing 
letter - it shifted blocks of text around and basically ruined the 
letter formatting.)  But then I could not get that system to actually 
merge the data into letters.  Somehow after closing and reopening that 
file and de-registering and then re-registering the spreadsheet, the 
commands for merging to document or printing showed up.  But even then I 
was still not able to flip through the records to see how they would 
appear in the preview.  I was able to merge the document to a file, 
though, and then print that.

Then after similar stumbling around, opening and closing files, 
de-registering and re-registering databases, I was able to get the merge 
fields to show up for the labels.  I've now printed the labels.  But 
again, I have no idea what fixed the problem, and am not at all 
confident I can do it successfully in the future.

Mail merges are one of the most important aspects of an office suite 
like this for me.  I really wish it could be made more simple and reliable.

Carl


On 2/4/19 6:53 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote:
> Hi Wayne,
>
> This is off list so I should probably post this to the support list, 
> but after  a while of fiddling around, removing the databases I'd 
> registered (Tools | Options | Base | Databases), closing LO, and then 
> re-opening LO and re-registering them with the mail merge wizard, I 
> was eventually able to get the spreadsheet to show in the labels 
> picklist.  I think it may be a slight bug, but it eventually let me 
> build the labels.  Hope something like that will work for you.  Try 
> de-registering the DBs, closing, restarting, re-registering, and see 
> what  happens. You've probably done that, but maybe it'll work?
>
> BTW, I'm on LO 6.1.4 I think, Windows 10, Intel processor (don't 
> recall what and I'm off that computer now).
>
> Carl
>
>
> On 2/4/19 4:59 PM, stinson wrote:
> > Carl,
> >
> > I'm having the same problem...not resolved.
> >
> >
> > Platform: AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 555 Processor × 2
> >
> > Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
> >
> > LibreOffice Version: 5.1.6.2
> > Build ID: 1:5.1.6~rc2-0ubuntu1~xenial4
> > CPU Threads: 2; OS Version: Linux 4.4; UI Render: default;
> > Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); Calc: group
> >
> > I've created a mailing DB - named columns (tables) -  saved it - 
> > registered it ...but
> >
> > when attempting to print mailing labels only the DB name shows in the 
> > label window - no table names are made available to format the label.
> >
> > If I resolve this issue will post my solution
> >
> > Wayne
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2/4/19 4:37 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote:
> >
> > > I'm trying to build a set of "Avery 5160" labels to match the 
> > > letters I'm printing via mail merge, using the same spreadsheet data 
> > > source.  When I select Mailing Labels as the new document type, I am 
> > > presented with a drop-down list of databases.  I've registered the 
> > > spreadsheet during the letter creation (though it has seemingly 
> > > created the database multiple times, as it shows me 4 or 5 options 
> > > with the same name) but when I select it in the labels dialog, it 
> > > shows no tables and no fields.
> > >
> > > Help!  How do I get the "registered" databases to show me the fields 
> > > and data?
> > >
> > > The mail merge process seems to be pretty cumbersome.  Aside from 
> > > this problem, labels aren't created the same way Letters are, and I 
> > > had to search and try things for hours to figure out how to insert 
> > > address, salutation, and other fields manually (I don't like the 
> > > address block approach of the wizard).  The system seems to think my 
> > > merge documents are damaged, launching the recovery system every 
> > > time I open them (see my other post), and discarding the 
> > > auto-recovery entries doesn't help.  This really shouldn't be so 
> > > hard to do.

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