Business Card Fonts (2000)

Topic

New Reply

I read the post re: label fonts, but I can’t understand what I have to do to get formatted cards. I have done a single business card, with my photo and the fonts I want. Now I want 10 to a page. When I highlight everything and go into Tools|Envelops and Labels, select the form number and print, I get the photo but not the right font.

I tried changing the style of normal in my document. When I did that, in the labels dialog, it showed the font I want, but it didn’t print that font. What if I wanted two different fonts on my business card? My normal.dot has a footer, so it prints too. I don’t want to remove that from my normal.dot every time I want business cards or labels.

I tried using Phil’s advice in the labels fonts post to use mail merge, but I can’t understand how to apply that re: what’s the data source. Then I’m supposed to edit the data source. It didn’t give me the merge button.

I also a month or so ago tried the Microsoft business cards template, but it gives you a page of their formatted labels with sample data. I didn’t understand how to get in my own data and the font I want except by replacing it in all 10 cards – that didn’t make any sense to me. I’m sure I was missing something.

I’m about ready to just position these things on a page myself. Surely there’s a way to do it?

Reply | Quote

Replies

You’d think there would be a wizard for this sort of thing! Or maybe that’s the template you don’t like.

Here’s what I suggest. Make a table of the correct size for your 10 cards. Put the content in the first cell and bookmark it (e.g., select contents only, Insert>Bookmark…). Then, in the second cell, insert a REF field pointing to that bookmark. Works? Good, now copy that field into the other 8 cells and you’re done.

Reply | Quote

Jefferson, that is so good. Thanks.

You’d definitely think Microsoft’s business card templates would work that way (with ref fields) if they aren’t going to use the labels tool (which they don’t – I checked again just to be sure. There are no fields, and when you change Business Name on one card, it doesn’t change the other nine). I already had just arranged my nine copies of the card on the page, so I replaced the copies with ref fields. I think the table will be probably even better, as I can size it based on the specs for the business card form.

You should sell your solution to Microsoft.

Reply | Quote

I should have known better than to get all excited. Update field removes my picture. And if I paste the pictures all back and reposition them, printing updates the fields again anyway (I know I can change that, but normally I want it to do that). It doesn’t seem to make any difference if I get the text and picture in via autotext or autocorrect – the picture still goes. It doesn’t make a difference if I’m using table cells or columns and line feeds.

What does make a difference is if the picture is inline. Then it stays with the bookmark. Otherwise, it doesn’t even work to put a separate bookmark on the picture and add a ref field for that. Of course, I don’t want the picture inline because I want it to the right of three rows. I can put textboxes with the pictures in the header as watermarks, but that’s certainly convoluted. I keep getting different results with textboxes in the text, but the bottom line is that they still go away if they’re not inline (I can’t create one inline, but if I make it a bookmark and put a ref field in the next card for the textbox, it’s inline, so it refreshes but not in the right place and if I put it in front of the text, it disappears next time I update.

I give up. I told Phil I was going to sleep an hour ago. I’m doin’ it. Maybe this will be crystal clear in the morning.

Anyway, it’s nice talking to you guys again.

Reply | Quote

Oh yes, since I only use inline pictures (no matter what gymnastics are required, the fact that they stay put makes me happy), I tend to forget about the idiosyncracies of the drawing layer.

I think, without actually testing, that you have two options: (1) Nest a two-column table inside the first cell so you can position the picture and text inline (similar to how you would do it in HTML); or (2) Use a four-column table for your cards, and use two bookmarks and two ref fields for every subsequent card. The second method is more plodding and methodical and, probably, less likely to blow up. The first would be a fun experiment to see whether Word can bookmark an entire nested table. Hope this helps.

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the additional ideas, Jefferson. I haven’t tried them yet (I’d have to break each cell into three and I haven’t noticed Word on my system is any too happy about that kind of thing), but I have figured out the Microsoft Templates. I had to find one that uses the font I want to use (or now that I think of it, it wasn’t my font but it was a non-Times New Roman font), then edit that, delete everything in the cell and replace it with my card. Do that in each cell. What it gives you is the table, which dimensions I never figured out last night. Are table cell dimensions an html feature? I have Measurement units set to inches, but the table cell dimension dialog is using pixels, the form description is in inches and I wasn’t up to a conversion last night.

Reply | Quote

Hi Wendy:
I’m glad you got the solution, but mail merge should work also. I don’t know which post you’re referring to because the search engine is down, but it’s not the data source that you modify. It’s the main document…the one you put your merge fields in. You should be able to format your cells any way you want by following the mail merge wizard & then do the merge.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Phil, but I don’t get it. I can’t make sense of what’s a field or even what’s a database. I have a document with five lines and a picture. Can I put that into a field? Or do I have to set up the whole thing as a database with one record and a bunch of fields and then bring in each of the fields and reformat the whole thing in my new document? Can I set up the picture as a field?

No rush on the reply. It’s way past my bedtime.

Reply | Quote

Hi Wendy:
Just to clarify a couple of things regarding mail merge. A mail merge consists of three files:
1. A data source (which you can think of as basically a table, although other formats are possible). Each column is a field, with the first row having the names of the fields. Each row after the field names is a record.
2. A main document. This is the document that is created when you choose Form Letters, envelopes, labels, catalog, etc. It consists of boilerplate text & pictures & mergefields. The mergefield names come from the data source.
3. The merged document = the result of the merge. This should look exactly like the main document, except the merge fields now contain text from each record.

In your case, the table of cells for the resultant labels & the picture are part of the main document. So are the five lines. I assume that you have a list of names & addresses that make up the datasource. You could put a picture in the data source, in a column. If you did, you’d have to put it in every row. If you put a picture in a datasource, it MUST be inline, or else it isn’t really in the table cell. You CAN have a graphic in the main document that is not inline. There is at least one gotcha. You must align it relative to the page or margin, not to a paragraph. The reason is that your paragraph will expand (move) in the merged document, when the field is replaced with text. Also, the paragraph that the graphic is anchored to will be moved. As a result, it is not as reliable as an inline graphic.

I apologize if this seems confusing. I’m not explaining it as well as I’d like. If you upload the document with the five lines & picture, I’ll look at it. If it’s too large or sensitive, you can send it to me offline & I will post the results back here.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

OK, Phil, you’re on. The enterprise is that I’m interested to know whether I just misunderstood that you can use mail merge in this situation. It’s not the case that I have any list of names and addresses. I just want to print my business card 10 to a page. I’m not desperate for a solution, as I have figured out the MS templates (see reply to Jefferson) and I have a printable page. The question was only whether mail merge is a possible tool. My card is at
http://www3.telus.net/wcutler/WLCfiles/Cards2.doc%5B/url%5D , as it’s too large to attach.

Reply | Quote

Hi Wendy:

After looking at your document (Cards2.doc), I can see that a mail merge is not the way to go. A mail merge would be useful only if each element of your card (firstname, mi, lastname, address, city, etc.)

Here are two ways to accomplish what you want. First, the harder way. Here’s what I did to your single “card” set up.

1. I double clicked your picture to open up the Format/Picture dialog box.
2. Under layout, I changed “in front of” to square. Your not putting the picture in front of text.
3. Right clicked the picture/Format picture/layout/advanced & clicked lock anchor. This kept everything the same, but I didn’t want the anchor to move to another paragraph.
4. I selected everything & made it an AutoText entry called “Wendy”.
5. On a separate page, I created a 2 column, 5 row table because that’s what you wanted. I had to fiddle with the measurements of the row & column & set them to exact measurements. This took a little trial & error.
6. Then I typed Wendy & pressed F3 in each cell.
7. Then I saved it as a template & copied the AutoText entry from normal to my new Wendy Cutler.dot.

Now for the other method. The first 3 steps are the same.
4. I took your document & made it into a template simply by doing a SaveAs. I did this to preserve your styles, so that the labels wouldn’t be based on the default normal.dot. THIS IS THE KEY.
5. Then I selected your layout (Ctrl+A) & went to Insert/AutoText/AutoText… & changed the “look in” to Cards2.dot (your template) & named it “wendy”.
6. Now with either the Cards2.dot open or a document based on it open, I went to Tools/Envelopes & labels/labels tab.
7. I picked the label size that I wanted.
8. I ERASED what was in there & typed “wendy” (no quotes) & pressed F3.
9. Then I clicked New document. Presto–there were your labels.

While it looks like more steps, it’s easier. This time, I didn’t have to measure the table size & fiddle with it. I will send you all 3 of these in a zip file (too large for the Lounge).
Hope this helps,

Reply | Quote