[ms office - 2010] Mail merge unhappiness

[jmak]

I'm feeling sad and incompetent today. I'm sure it's something I'm doing or not doing, but have come to the end of my ideas.

 

I've put together a document which is supposed to go home with the children today to let the parents know what their child's log in details to the VLE. I've used mail merge to put the child's name and class on the front and the username and password inside. The data source is a spreadsheet (currently both files are stored on my desktop).

 

On screen when I preview before printing, everything is OK. If I print one record as a test, it's OK. If print three, the first two swap the relationship between username and actual name and the third one comes out OK.

 

I have deleted and re-created the link, but am now stuck.

 

Please help...

[jmak]

Cracked it, so just posting back in case anyone has a similar problem:

 

I had four standard pages in Word and sent it to the printer. In printer properties I converted it to a booklet, so that four pages printed onto a single A4 sheet. The printer didn't know that each document was slightly different and printed the front side (front and back page of booklet) working from the top of the dataset and the back (inside pages) from the bottom of the list upwards. Therefore if it was a single record it was OK and if an odd number of pages, the middle one lined up, but none of the others did. Kyocera printer BTW.

 

Fix was to set up the document as a booklet in Word (should have done that originally). In Office 2010, the setting to do this is in the Page Layout tab, then choose the extended Page Setup menu. You then choose landscape orientation and Pages = Book Fold.

 

I'll go home happy - although the booklets won't go home until tomorrow What a waste of a day...