[Graham Mayor]

"Ricky Harris" wrote in message
...
Thanks Doug - I tried it and still cannot deliver the result. Why?
- I created a new pub document with the same dimensions etc but only
the leftmost 1/3 (ie one invite). I then tried to merge catalog with
the same doc file I was using before. (BTW it's made triply difficult
by Microsoft to get such a document - you have to find docx in an
obscure drop-down menu - so some unusual persistence is required even
to get that far).
- Now, unaccountably with this document (but not with its progenitor),
Publisher says it cannot open by docx data file.
- In total frustration I thought, why not write a docx file and work
in Word (which while often not intuitive, at least usually works) -
but lo and behold, this alleged publishing layout program cannot
actually write that layout to Word - only the TEXT part of it. Spare
me!
- Where do I go from here? Probably uninstall Publisher and try to
buy something decent. Meanwhile, set the whole thing up again from
scratch in Word.

I have not used Publisher 2007 for mail merge either, however using Doug's
instructions (albeit it seems he was using Publisher 2010 as in Publisher
2007 the Catalog tool is on tools mailings and catalog) it was a simple
task to create such a merge document starting from a blank A4 landscape
page.

The catalog tool puts a large drawing box on the page containing
instructions, which you can drag to the left to create a box one third the
page size. With your cursor in that box, you get a supplementary dialog to
set the repeat, which by dragging the box to one third the page size will
have automatically been set to 1 down 3 across.

In the task pane that will have appeared on the left of the window, select
Use an Existing list or database and click the Next button. The file open
dialog box appears and you can select your Word document containing the data
from there. By default it opens the My Data Sources Folder, but you can
easily select any other folder. Insert the fields from that data source in
the catalog drawing box and the other two copies will populate
automatically.

Word and Publisher formats are entirely different from one another. Word is
a document layout application. Publisher is a page layout application. They
are not intended to exchange documents. You can create this type of merge
document in either application, but you cannot use the same merge document
in both. If you want to create this type of document in Word I would suggest
a label format http://www.gmayor.com/merge_labels_with_word_2007.htm

Where do you go from here? Well you can think about what you are doing and
try again, or you can get yet another application that you won't be able to
use until you learn the basics.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org