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oranco

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Mail merge to print - individual PDFs

Hi,

I have a mail merge to Word which when run will produce x number of 5 page reports.

How can I batch print the reports into individual pdfs with files names based on the value of one of the merge fields.

I imagine I could use a VBA macro to do this. Any ideas?

Thanks
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GrahamSkan
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I am unclear about how one prints to a PDF, but I think that the simplest way would be to do the mailmerge to a new document and to run a macro that splits out each report and saves or prints it. The splitting bit is straightforward, but the naming part would depend on being able to locate the name on the result document. Hopefully this would always be something like, say,  the third word in the second paragraph.

Which version of Word are you using?
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oranco

ASKER

hi,

we are using Word 2003.

The printing to PDF would be done using a batch command in Adobe Acrobat Distiller but if we are able to break a long document down into individual files, we should be ok.

How can we do it - bear in mind that i am not sure at this point if we have 4, 5 or 6 pages so it should be clear in the VBA where this needs to be set. The naming of the document would come from one of the merge fields.

Thanks
Sticking with Plan A, the code would look like this.

Sub SplitMMResultDoc()
    Dim Doc1 As Document
    Dim Doc2 As Document
    Dim strFileName As String
    Dim rng As Range
    Dim sec As Section
     
    Set Doc1 = ActiveDocument
    For Each sec In Doc1.Sections
        Set rng = sec.Range
        rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, -1 ' omit the seciotn break
        rng.Copy
        strFileName = sec.Range.Paragraphs(2).Range.Words(3)
        Set Doc2 = Documents.Add
        Doc2.Range.Paste
        Doc2.SaveAs ("C:\MyFolder\" & strFileName & ".doc")
        Doc2.Close False
    Next sec
     
End Sub


If we can't be sure of the position of text from the merge field that provides the name, then Plan B will be to run the merge itself programatically.
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ASKER

thx... so i have create a doc with 8 pages. Each page contains the following text:

'Hello , I'm a test recording

Name is <name>'

When i run the macro tho i get an error 'the requested member of the collection does not exist' referring to:

strFileName = sec.Range.Paragraphs(2).Range.Words(3)

where am i going wrong?
Sorry about the delay. I had to go out.
I can see an error, but not what I would expect.
It looks as if you have a third word in the second paragraph, do it's a bit puzzling.  
This code splits the line up, to help isolate the problem.

Sub SplitMMResultDoc()
    Dim Doc1 As Document
    Dim Doc2 As Document
    Dim strFileName As String
    Dim rng As Range
    Dim sec As Section
    Dim para as Paragraph
    Dim wrd as range
    Set Doc1 = ActiveDocument
    For Each sec In Doc1.Sections
        Set rng = sec.Range
        rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, -1 ' omit the seciotn break
        rng.Copy
        Set Para = sec.Range.Paragraphs(2)
        Set wrd = para.Words(3)
        strFileName = wrd.text
        Set Doc2 = Documents.Add
        Doc2.Range.Paste
        Doc2.SaveAs ("C:\MyFolder\" & strFileName & ".doc")
        Doc2.Close False
    Next sec
     
End Sub
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ASKER

Morning,

So now when I run it I get a 'compile error: method or data member not found' - and it gets stuck on Set wrd = para.Words(3)

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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GrahamSkan
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ASKER

thanks. that's great.

we got it working and added another couple of lines to get it to print to pdf.

brilliant.