Page Numbering when merging a document

Question

Please help!
I am presently working a trial copy of CS3 and trying to figure if I will convert from PM7.
I publish a 12 page newsletter each month with a merge of name and address. The merge works but the page numbers continue after the first set of pages.
In other words p1-p12 is the first set and p13-p25 is the second and so on, but I want to retain the original page numbering of p1-p12 for each merged set.
Can anyone guide me to get this to work?

Answer 1

No Problem. I'm presuming you don't have a merge-in-print-stream workflow available, so you need to make, ultimately, a 6,000 page document (as I said, this is not the ideal solution). That's the way Data Merge works in ID.
Create a twelve page facing-pages doc to start, and add the fields you need for mailing addresses to the first or last page, and the rest of your fixed content wherever it belongs. Since all of the content is static except for the address info, you can actually build the entire document on master pages, if you wish, using a different master for each page, but it's pretty much six of one, half-dozen of the other. The advantage to putting the fields on the master page is you can update the data file. DON'T ADD AUTO PAGE NUMBERS. Put real numbers on pages 1-12, and they'll repeat along with the rest of the stuff.
With the document set up this way, execute the merge (you can test it by doing a limited number of records). You should get a document with all pages repeating, in order, and the merged addresses.
In my test run the last page of one set was shown separately from the following first page of the next set in the pages panel, and if you open the panel menu and uncheck the "allow document pages to shuffle" option, they will stay that way. It makes no difference for printing, but it is more intuitive to keep them broken apart.
To print, use Print Booklet, and set up as two-up perfect bound with a signature size of 12. You could also do this with a 4, 8, or 16 page newsletter with a corresponding signature size count. Set the page size to landscape tabloid in the print options, and check the preview. Should be good to go. Go fishing while you wait for it to spool those 6,000 pages.
The good news is that the same 12-page base document should work with a commercial Xerox or other high volume copier/printer that has a data-merge module in the RIP (though you might have to do the imposition yourself, and there are scripts for that that work just fine), so you have to do the same work either way.
Peter