Bulk mail addressing software

I am printing postcards to mail out and they are 4up on a letter size sheet.

I have managed to figure out how to use Word to address these in sequence (i.e first sheet, record #1 is. top left, #2 top right, #3 bottom left, #4 bottom right).  What I want is for the records to be sorted down through the stack.  In otherwords, top left position on the top sheet is record #1, top left on the next sheet down is record #2 and so on.

Does anyone know of a program that can do this?  I used to work for a printing company and they had a program that could do this with a variable data press they had there but my google searches so far are fruitless.

My solution to this would be to create a new column in the data source.  With tricky math, you can put a 1 on record 1, 5 on record 2, 9 on record 3 etc.  I say the math is tricky because you'd have to figure out how many pages its going to do.  Let's say its 3 pages for a total of 12 records.

1    1
2    5
3    9
4    2
5    6
6    10
7    3
8    7
9    11
10   4
11   8
12   12

Then, you sort on the new column instead of the original sorting mechanism, save the file and you will have the solution you're looking for when you do the mail merge

Clever,  now how about the Excel formula or macro to populate the sheet?

Might use this to create some serial numbered and bar-coded cards.  Would be allot easier at the paper cutter than tearing the cards apart and reordering them.

Dave

I was hoping someone else would chime in with that one.  I know the math and the principle...  someone else better with Excel might be able to write out the formula.  :)

I took an example of printing serialized business cards 500 quantity on 10 up card stock which means I will print on 50 sheets

I added 4 columns on the spread sheet 

A - Sequence number 1 - 500

B - Sheet -- a repeating sequence 1 - 50 for which sheet the record will be on  (I used copy paste to fill the column)

C - Position -- on sheet where the record will be 1 repeated 50 times 2 repeated 50 times and so forth (I used copy paste to fill the column)

D - Order -- The formula which gives the magic order number for the merge  = ( ( Sheet - 1 ) * 'number of labels per sheet' ) + Position

                                                                                                                =((B2-1)*10)+C2

Sort on the Order column and run your merge

Hope this helps  I'm sure this could be made more automatic with a Macro

Dave

dwelp:

I took an example of printing serialized business cards 500 quantity on 10 up card stock which means I will print on 50 sheets

I added 4 columns on the spread sheet 

A - Sequence number 1 - 500

B - Sheet -- a repeating sequence 1 - 50 for which sheet the record will be on  (I used copy paste to fill the column)

C - Position -- on sheet where the record will be 1 repeated 50 times 2 repeated 50 times and so forth (I used copy paste to fill the column)

D - Order -- The formula which gives the magic order number for the merge  = ( ( Sheet - 1 ) * 'number of labels per sheet' ) + Position

                                                                                                                =((B2-1)*10)+C2

Sort on the Order column and run your merge

Hope this helps  I'm sure this could be made more automatic with a Macro

Dave

 

Hey, this did the trick!

I was hoping for something more dynamic so that I could change variables for the # up and # of sheets but what you've given me will save hours in extra printing time.

I owe you a beer!

Well if you can't do it on paper first you can't do it on a computer.  So for one o'clock in the morning it's a good start.  It shouldn't be too hard to run a VBA script or an awk script to automate the process.

I will be using this to create the job of 500 so this came at a good time.

Dave