pff@thumper.bellcore.com (Peter Ferris) (05/31/89)
Greetings,
I'm using Microsoft Word 4.0 to print about 300 very simple certificates.
Nothing very fancy at all. Just a print merge, sucking a name and two other
very small fields from the properly made data file, merging w/ three lines
of text. Not a very demanding print merge so far.
The "gotcha":
I'm using a small blurb of PostScript to print the corporate logo - very
simple (circle with bell in middle). This is maybe 20 lines of PS code.
Works great by itself.
The Problem:
My LaserWriter NT will print about 10 certificates (pages) at a time and stop.
It will appear to finish sometimes, other times MS Word will "Unexpectedly
Quit", or worse: My monitor will go nuts, seemingly lost all horiz hold or
something! (Yes, my monitor REALLY <IS> ok!). The only fix then is a re-boot.
Sorry about anything else you might've had running with Multi-Finder. :-(.
Yes, I've tried it with MF turned off. ("But this IS Word 4.0, I thought it
was perfect...").
I know the "trick" of turning "background printing" off while using PS & MS
Word. You'd think someone (Apple or <Microsoft>) has had enough time to fix
this from version 3.02 of Word... (or is this a "feature"? :-) ).
Microsoft tech support says that my LaserWriter is running out of memory. I
find that to be a curious statement, since I've had no other problems using
the printer for even more memory intensive files (much more complicated &
changing graphics) - with no probs from over 25 major applications. Just Word.
If the LW <IS> having memory problems only doing a print merge, who should I
"blame" - Apple or Microsoft?
If it is a memory prob, then I suspect that Microsoft isn't clearing old
garbage out before printing the new stuff. I may be wrong (probably!). I
called Microsoft again, and got a different answer... this time it was
explained that the LaserWriter was "timing out" - a fault of the LaserWriter
(ie; "Blame Apple"). I asked how come I never got any dialog box informing me
of the timeout and asking me if I wanted to print again, etc. Using PS
developement tools {eg; LaserTalk - excellent!} you'll see the results ARE
returned from the printer. No (intelligent) response. Using the "Print New
Document" in the print merge dialog WILL print all of the records
(certificates).
When I remove the PS code from the doc, everything works fine. The PS code
itself is fine. But embedded as a character type (or whatever they call it in
Word!) in a Word doc, that's when the fecal material hits the ventilating
device.
Microsoft's ultimate remedy (result of both calls): print just a few (5 seems
to be the limit) certificates at a time, incrementing the "From" and "To" boxes
in the print dialogues, eg; "5 to 9" then "10 to 14" and so on... What a pain!
Glad that's only 300 certificates and not 3000! Anyone else run into this or
have any comments on it?
I would've though Microsoft would have had more interest in resolving this
problem. This merge really is trivial. It's really cast a shadow of doubt on
my confidence factor in Word's print merge capability. There is other print
merging software available. Anyone know of any that really CAN handle
PostScript?
Is there anyone "intelligent" at Microsoft reading this, can you shed a little
more "helpful" light on this?
Many thanks to the net...
Pete Ferris
pff@thumper.bellcore.com
(e-mail please!)
P.S.: I guess this is a good place to add that, overall, I still think MS Word
is the best WP application available for the Mac.