InDesign Mail Merge troubleshooting...just hangs.

Using US Postal Service Postal One to create a CSV file for mail merge. ID5.5 on a PC. Worked for 5 months, now just hangs. Gets 90% done then does not finish. 350 newsletters with 4 merge fields. Single Record, overset text NOT checked. Suggestions?

Hi there
You are not alone. I've just posted separately about the data merge problem which seems to have come back to InDesign (scroll up a bit from this posting). It is truly infuriating. Even when data merge works, it seems to be separating the merged document into several documents. Something seems to be truly amiss with the data merge facility. Adobe seem to have had problems with this part of the program for a long time now and don't seem to have fixed it. I'm hoping somebody from Adobe will read these posts and offer up a solution.
Richard

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InDesign Mail Merge

I am trying to create a mail merge on 2000+ post cards all with different addresses that need to be printed 6 or 8 to page. Is this possible in InDesign? If so, how?

May I suggest you read the help about mail merge and in particular about multiple record layout?
Yes, ID will do what you want. The below is a screen shot of a mock merge, 4 "cards" per page.

Mail not responding, just hanging

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you might try a search of Mail discussions for Mail+Hanging - there have been many threads on the subject, most with great advice.
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Sometimes, hanging can be due to Mail attempting to download a large message on start-up. If you have web -access to your email (many isp's allow this), you can look at the list of messages via safari & see if that applies to you.

InDesign mail merge: changing the "record per page" function

I am a new InDesign user and having a problem that I have spent several days trying to correct. Briefly, we are “attempting” to create our product catalog by importing our QuickBooks data (as a csv or txt file).
I think I have isolated the problem to the “records per page” setup.
For whatever reason, when I open the .csv or .txt file (Window > Utility >Data Merge),
From the Data Merge Panel, I am selecting the source file and the “Create Merged Document” box starts.
However, ID is defaulting to one record per page. When I open the Multiple Record Layout tab I get “… optiion disabled because single record is selected…”
I have spent several days reading every post I could find on this and I am going brain dead. Can anyone help me here ?
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Hi Jeffrey,
Thank you for taking the time to put the video capture together. Unfortunately, it is hanging up about one-third of the way through...
What it does show is opening a clean sheet, opening Pages, and then opening Data Merge....
As you can see on the two screen shots below, I don't even get the Data Merge option on my Pages dialog...?
So, I'm wondering if I have a problem with my ID install or have some how corrupted a setup or default file.... Hmmmm
Thanks again, appreciate your help.
Message was edited by: Everwood Farm
I re-installed ID - probably didn't need to do this - and deleted the cache and setup files which was the culprit. Now works perfectly .... go figure :-)

Mail merge speed/reliability issues

As a company we regularly conduct mail merges for anywhere from 50 to 3000 data records within InDesign. We merge to a document with 3/4 layers and 3/4 linked images (but this isn't the cause of the speed issues as it is still slow when these are removed). However, the merge crashes InDesign when using text files of more than 500 data records. This means we have to do all large mail merges in batches of ~250 to maintain system performance. NB, we do use fairly high-spec machines - does anyone know if InDesign mail merges tend to require VERY high spec-machines?
If anyone has any suggestions for performing mail merges (from text files or MS Access) using InDesign I would greatly appreciate them? Any plug-ins specifically intended for mail merges or even better just some tips on machine spec and InDesign/data settings?
Many thanks

Some questions:
Which version of office were you using before? 2003?
Are the data files on a network, or on your local machine? If they are on a network, can you make a copy of one of them on your local machine and try again?
Can you open the files directly in Excel? What extension do they have (.xls, or something else?) I am wondering whether access to other file types has been left blocked on your machine but is allowed on your colleague's machine.
Are you just opening the mail merge main document and seeing this message? If so, do you see the same thing if you start with a new document and try to connect to one of these data sources?
Can you confirm that the message is about Access even though you are trying to connect to an Excel file?
(Also, office 2007 has some new stuff - that let's you specify that certain folders are "trusted" . I don't think that ever affected MailMerge but it may be as well to make sure that your documents and data sources are in trusted locations).
Also worth trying to start Word in "Safe mode" - see, e.g. http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/work-with-office-safe-modes-HP010140792.aspx
Peter Jamieson

Why do I receive "4.3.2 connection rate limit exceeded" error message using the mail merge extension and what can be done about it?

I am using TB 31.3.0 with Mail Merge 3.9.1. I routinely send an email to 435 members of an volunteer emergency responders group that I coordinate. I do so using a .csv list with mail merge. While there were no problems in the past, more recently the mail merge function will hang after sending a varied number of messages successfully and I get the following error message:
"An error occurred sending mail. The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: 4.3.2 connection rate exceeded.."
There is an "OK" button in the error message pop up that can be clicked to resume the mail merge process. It would appear that if I click the "OK" button immediately whenever the error message is received I must do so frequently and some members do not receive their email. If I delay clicking the "OK" button, I found that I only needed to click the "OK" button twice to send to all the members.
An on line search suggests this is the result of some sort of throttling by my ISP, Sonic.net. There is also this comment: "If you are receiving this error, you are likely using mailing list software which cannot decipher the temporary fail codes. If so, you will need to set your software to slow down its delivery rate and/or reduce the number of active connections per remote host."
I am not super technical. Is it realistic to think that I can tweak mail merge to that I do not have to babysit my email to this group?

then I suggest you send using a mail provider that is not actively trying to block your outgoing mail. Or use a yahoo / google groups mailing list feature so you only send a single mail.
Or use a free account from the likes of http://www.ymlp.com/ who limit free account mailing lists to 1000 subscribers. ( Googled them this morning)

Mail Merge script to replace any blank fields with specific text

In InDesign Mail Merge I would like to replace any blank fields with specific text. For example if we have four fields (A, B, C & D) to merge, and field A is blank, it would insert field C.
In essence leaving no blank fields but replacing a blank field with another specific field.
I have read that inDesign does have Mail Merge limitations but if there is a script that we could run that would solve our problem.
Please let me know if you can help?

I take from the lack of response it is not possible to do this in InDesign.

Mail merge doesn't work according to the instructions

I have Microsoft office 2007 and I am trying to do a mail merge. I am following the Mail merge wizard and all the steps are working fine until I get toward the end (step 4 of 6). Under replicate labels, it says 'you can copy the layout of the first label
to the other labels on the page by clicking the button below'. I click on the button which says 'update all labels' and out of the 30 potential labels on the page, only the first 3 and the last 2 get formatted. When I preview the labels, I find that indeed,
only the first 3 labels and last two labels on each page have names and addresses in them.
I have repeated the process, trying to make sure I am following the directions closely, but I get the same result. I have tried to do the steps independently of the mail merge wizard, just by following the steps in one of the forums, but I also get the same
result.
What am I missing? HELP!

Nobody?

Mail just hangs

Hi.
When I try to open mail it just 'hangs' - I get the busy symbol. It was alright when I first bought the machine about 3 months ago but since I've done a few software updates it's now gone wrong.
Eventually, the in box sometimes opens, other times it just hangs and I have to force a quit.
I put system disk 1 in to try and re-install Mail but I can't find it amongst the bundled software. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Terry,
Welcome to the Discussions.
It is not often that reinstalling anything is required, or even useful.
What type of account are you using -- POP, IMAP or .mac?
What version of 10.4 are you using. Can you open Mail, and click on Mail in the Menubar, and choose About Mail? If so, what version of Mail is reported. Open the Applications folder, and with Get Info, report the version of Mail observed.
More info, please.
Ernie

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Almost all aspect of mail merge is working except:
I've tried every method to have the excel .csv file with Name/ Address show up on allocated text box on (8x3 sticker label for envelopes) but Indesign keeps on creating a new page for a single listing (ie. page one as 1 name and address, page two has 2 etc...)
I think I have spent a good two hours trying different methods, Youtube etc...
I have also created a a whole new Indesign doc same result.

free1 wrote:
…ie. page one as 1 name and address, page two has 2 etc…
Do you mean you are getting only one record per page, instead of the number of stickers on your sheet? If that's the case, do you have Multiple Records selected in the Records Per Document section of the Create Merged Document window?

Can you do a mail merge in Indesign?

Hi all, basically i have to create certificates with up to 200 names. The Certificate is created on the master page and then the relevent number of pages inserted. Then the time consuming part comes when i ahve to copy and paste 200 names individually.
is there a quicker way, maybe you can set a value in the master text box and have it populated from an exteranl file?? Something like a mail merge i guess?
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Thanks for any help.

RIch, it sounds like you are doing something wrong, unless you have that many records. You should not be getting more than one page per record in a job like this.
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After mail merge in inDesign how do I save each page as a separate PDF

Hi
I have done a mail merge to get data on a form, now I need to split the doc so that each page is in a separate PDF doc. How do I do that?
Thank you for any assistance that can be given.
Regards,
Andre

http://indesignsecrets.com/split-up-data-merged-pdf-files-into-smaller-files.php

Mail Merge doesn't send, just makes Template

I was able to successfully create messages before that would send or be saved to my Drafts folder, but now it doesn't work. I haven't changed any settings since the successful mail was sent. I am using "{{...}}" for all variables, and they are exactly as I have them in the .csv file I have made as a source. For the "To:" field I even tried "<{{Email}}>" but it did not work. Included is a screenshot of my current setup
Thank you for your help!

add-ons are supported by their author.
What I know of the mail merge add-on most issues are caused by spaces in the field names in the CSV file. "TO: " is not the same as "TO:" (I have used quotation makes to illustrate the space)

I cabn get into AOL on Firefox, but cannot read my e-mails there. It hangs up "loading" when I try to open an e-mail.

== Issue
==
Firefox is having problems with certain web sites
== Description
==
I can get into AOL on Firefox, but cannot open e-mails. It "hangs" on loadfing an e-mail when I try to open one.
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==
http://www.aol.com
== Troubleshooting information
==
I just get a loading message with my wheel turning, but it just hangs and doesn't open.
== Firefox version
==
3.6.6
== Operating system
==
Windows Vista
== User Agent
==
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 GTB7.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
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==
*-np-mswmp
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the settings program will not allow me to enter any of those cells. the accounts section is all in grey scale (not black) and none will open including "add account"

Anyone been able to get mail merge to work?

I have a standard form that is currently being filled out
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lengthy explanation.....

These release notes provide late-breaking and release information for Cisco? NAC Appliance, formerly known as Cisco Clean Access (CCA), release 4.1(1). This document describes new features, changes to existing features, limitations and restrictions ("caveats"), upgrade instructions, and related information.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/prod_release_note09186a00807bb9f3.html

InDesign Mail Merge troubleshooting...just hangs.

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