Mail merge and print one document at a time?

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Mail merge and print one document at a time?

Hi all. I'm an Apple revert. I'm currently using the i7 iMac. Previous Apple computer was a //e.

I print an 8 or 12 page newsletter for my work. I want my printer/copier to fold and staple each document individually. Pages seems to send all documents to the printer in one huge file. How do I mail merge and print one document at a time?

[In Windows Publisher, there's a registry hack to make Pub print one at a time. Anything similar on a Mac?]

Mike

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Aug 18, 2011 12:05 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 19, 2011 1:19 PM in response to Movie Mike

Hi Mike,

Here's what I would be tempted to do...

I'd create a new, small, table to merge from. You could Copy/Paste one record at a time, or you could use any of several methods to index your way through the main table one record at a time. If this makes sense to you, we can work out the programming.

The workflow would be:

Choose next record to merge.

Command-S

Switch to Pages

Merge

repeat...

Jerry

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Answer 2

Movie Mike Author

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Aug 23, 2011 1:23 PM in response to Movie Mike

Thanks, Jerry. My problem is going to be that there are about 1200 records.

I'm going to call AppleCare and see what they say.

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Answer 3

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,825 points

Aug 23, 2011 2:16 PM in response to Movie Mike

The answer is simple, they can't change the app behavior.

If I remember well I posted a script allowing us to split a pdf the way we want.

So you may print the merged document in a PDF or maybe merge directly in a PDF (I never tried).

It would be quite easy to build a command splitting the huge one in documents of 8 or 12 pages.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 23 août 2011 23:14:53

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

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Answer 4

Movie Mike Author

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Aug 26, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Movie Mike

Applecare acknowleges that Pages '09 behavior in creating one massive merged file cannot be changed by users. I made an enhancement request. We'll see what iWork '12 looks like.

Jerry and Yvan, you both mentioned scripting a solution in Automator, I assume.

After I create a huge PDF, my preferred workflow is this:

Print, with a page range of 1 to 8. [The printer will assemble, fold, and staple my newsletter.]
Delete pages 1 to 8.
Repeat.

It is a "destructive" process which terminates when all the pages are printed and deleted. Does that sound right?

Thanks, guys, for all the hand-holding through this.

Mike

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Answer 5

Movie Mike Author

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Aug 26, 2011 1:49 PM in response to KOENIG Yvan

@Ivan, Thanks! I looked through your iDisk and must have missed the script you were talking about. Can you make a link?

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Answer 6

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,825 points

Aug 27, 2011 2:31 AM in response to Movie Mike

Hello

As you saw wrongly my first name I'm not too surprised that you missed the beast 😉

In fact it's not surprising that you missed it.

I prepared the archive but forgot to upload it 😟

Download :

For_iWork:iWork '09:découpe_PDFs.zip

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 27 août 2011 11:29:37

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

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