Writer Mail Merge stuck on first record

English
#1

Hi - I just went through half a box of envelopes because Writer’s mail merge keeps printing the first record over and over (and over…)

It sends the correct number of documents to the print queue, and the print preview shows progression as expected.

Thoughts?

#2

Have you inserted Next record along the database fields?

PS: In your question I miss some details in your proceeding.
PPS: Operating system? LibreOffice version?

#3

At first the same as @Grantler
But would also be intersted in your version of LibreOffice.
Fresh created mail-merge or an older project?
Created with some assistant, or yourself?
.
Can you share the file for inspection? (Not the list with addresses of course.)

#4

Hi,

Thanks much for the quick help. And sorry, my post did omit some important details.

Version is 25.8.3.2, running on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS.

My “solution” was to move over to LibreOffice running on Windoze.

My suspicion is that this might have been somewhere between the print dialog and the printer. I’m trying to print custom-sized envelopes that ended up being a hack in itself, resulting in the printer pausing and asking me to load the ‘correct’ paper. Could this have been the printer attempting to reprint the same image again? I’m not sure.

The same file did index through the records correctly from Windows, so problem avoided for the moment.

thanks ~

#5

As well, I didn’t know about Next Record.

When I print, it looks to be generating the correct number of documents. And as well, in the Print dialog preview, they do index through. They just didn’t come out that way from the printer.

#6

Actually that was the most puzzling part in your question:

What I would try next is:

  • print to a pdf-printer and check, if the error is also in the resulting
    pdf
  • In the dialogue to print serial letters you can also choose to generate a file instead. This creates a Writer .odt to inspect and print.

If one or both of this works they will be better work-arounds than booting another OS.
.
If the error persists you could try if the file works in safe mode (ignoring your user profile). To try this is a bit tedious, as the registered datasources are unknown/reset in safe mode.

#7

Without [next record] field, the program jumps to the next record at the end of document.
When you create something like address labels, with many addresses on one page of a document, each address label needs to be terminated by a [Next Record] field, EXCEPT the last one at the end of document.
[label with mail merge fields]->[next record]->
[label with mail merge fields]->[next record]->
…
[label with mail merge fields]->[end of document]

Since an envelope is a special page format of a letter document, the lack of a [next record] field should not be an issue. Each envelope should get another data record than the previous one without that field, which makes it possible to print many different addresses on a sheet of labels.
Make a copy of your document, remove confidential content, keep all the fields and upload to this place.

#8

This does not apply to synchronized labels created with File → New → Labels.

#9

Yes, indeed. It’s complicated. I just wanted to point out that the problem might be unrelated to any [Next record] fields, unless you try to print a sequence of envelopes separated from the letter text.

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