Mail Merge Printing

[mikelc2]

I have a situation that I'm encountering for the first time but I'm sure you guys have some experience.

I am doing a mail merge for approximately 1000 letters. The letter is 1-2 pages, the following the letter will be a third document that needs to come from another tray.

First two pages: Tray 1
Third page: Tray 3

If the documents are all printed individually, this is no problem. But when doing a mail merge it sends the document to the printer as a single document. Therefore when I select a "back cover" it will only do so on the very last page.

Is there a way to get around this? It's on a Ricoh MPC5503. I thought this would be simple but using front and back cover doesn't seem to work at all.

 

[mikelc2]

To get this to work as it should, I had to set a "chapter page" for it to print on, as 2, 4, 6, 8 etc to 100. I then print 50 records at a time.

 

[Steve0]

If your MPC5503 has a Fiery on it, you could have used Fiery's Freeform (VDP feature) to do it a little more easily. But what you did is workable. Nicely done.

 

[Graeme NZ]

There are probably better ways of doing it, but here are two different approaches...

A.
1. Print the variable data component (pages 1 & 2) as one run
2. Print the static component (page 3) as another run
3. Collate the pages together in a separate run, i.e. print a 3 page blank PDF where pages 1 & 2 are pulled from tray X and page 3 is pulled from tray Y, x1000 copies. Any inline finishing such as a staple top left corner can be set here.

B.
1. Export your mail merge as individual PDFs, i.e. 1,000x recipients = 1,000x 3 page PDFs.
2. use this great little program called Batch and Print Pro and it will send each PDF to the printer as a separate job using the settings you've specified in Batch and Print Pro.

or C.
1. Print the variable data component (pages 1 & 2) as one run
2. Print the static component (page 3) as another run
3. Hand collate it - it's only 1,000 records

I've used method A several times for runs where there is a little bit of inline finishing required, such as a staple top left corner. Be wary of being charged an extra click for the collation part - it's not something we have to worry about as the machine we use (Oce 6250) doesn't charge us clicks for collation, but it might be something for you to consider.
I've used method B for a tricky data job where each record had a unique page count and had to be imposed to be saddle stapled. It worked quite well.

 

[mikelc2]

Thanks all for feedback.

I had considered manually collating this. The trouble is all pages contain sensitive, personal information. I didn't want to risk anything being out of order!

Thanks for sharing the Batch and Print Pro software. I believe this will really come in handy in the near future.

 

[dpolglaze]

I'm assuming you're using MS Word. Do you have Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Pro? I would be careful creating PDFs from Word if you don't have one of these and don't have the "Adobe PDF" printer in your drop-down list when you merge. I've seen the built-in PDF creators cause serious font and reflow issues with VDP jobs. You say you are dealing with secure and sensitive personal data and a mail merge from Word is a variable data print job not done with professional software designed for this. If you have a Creo or Fiery or similar type of front end and you have at least Acrobat Standard, a fast and easy way to do this is to split the PDF into 1000 3-page PDFs and build a tray/page exceptions rule in a hot folder/virtual printer or some sort of driver template, then just batch the PDFs to the printer at maybe 50 at a time. I have given this same process to several customers who also had limited software and limited resources and it worked perfectly, although they had Fiery or Creo controllers that could handle the batching. Let me know if you need more details or guidance. Maybe we can talk on the phone or email.

Happy Printing!
Dwight