Postby LaRicaine@tiscali.fr on Sun Nov 27, 2005 4:55 am
My father, 89 years old and still going strong, sent me a call for help on printing custom-size envelopes (he’s doing his Christmas card mailing). I live far away (I’m in France, he’s in California), so I can’t go look at the problem myself and troubleshoot it. I’m hoping someone on this bulletin board might have had a similar problem and know how to solve it. Here’s his message:

“When I click on Format/envelope, I get the expected screen, and can print envelopes of a few specific sizes, but if I go to “create envelope” and specify some size that’s not already in the menu, it just doesn’t work right. Can’t get the printer to print it, and the address doesn’t transfer to the form as it should. What happens is that the printer starts going, and feeds sheet after sheet through without printing anything on them.

I reinstalled the printer, and reinstalled the WordPerfect, and still get the same results.

All this has happened since the advent of the crashed hard disk and the new hard disk that hp installed.

OK, so I designed my own envelope on WordPerfect, as a file, and have been printing the Christmas card envelopes, but it’s a slow process with this setup.”

Can anyone help him out with this?
Thanks!
Irene

Postby Graphcat on Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:21 am

I don’t understand what’s happening yet. Format/envelope doesn’t involve forms. Are we talking about capturing an address block off the current document and putting it into the box?

Printing sheet after sheet of blanks or junk is usually caused by the wrong printer driver. Not always a bad one; just a driver designed for some other printer model.

In general, the easiest way to do lots of envelopes in WP is to ignore the Envelope feature, and instead go to Format, Page, Page Setup, choose the envelope size there. Be sure to set the Paper Source option to match where the envelopes will be.

Then add a page header including the return address a few blank lines to take up space (and move the TO address down), and then, OUTSIDE AND AFTER the header, add a left margin code of enough space to position the address block.

Result: your own envelope document. Save it. To use, just put in the list of addresses at the end of the document, with no formatting, and a hard page code after each (ctrl-enter). The return address header will show up on every page automagically.

OK, so I designed my own envelope on WordPerfect, as a file, and have been printing the Christmas card envelopes, but it’s a slow process with this setup.”

Sounds like it’s most of the way done, other than adding the list and the hard page codes. Using a normal document this way is much more flexible and powerful and reliable than the format/envelope tool.

Jerry Stern
Moderator and Webmaster

Postby LaRicaine on Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:48 am

Thank you, Jerry.
I have forwarded your message to my dad. I also posted on a couple of other forums, and was told he needs to upgrade his version of WP. They sent a link to the FTP site. I know he had a hard disk crash and HP’s repairs included an upgrade to XP Home from W98. I doubt he has done any upgrading at all of his version of WP, so the problem could well be there.

Thanks for the tip on creating an envelope document. I have done that, too, and find it’s useful for printing out a series of envelopes (I use MS Word). I think my dad may be using the envelope function with his address book, and in any case he’s the sort of person who wants things to work the way they’re supposed to, and will keep trying until he gets it to work.

If he doesn’t get his problem sorted out, I’ll post again.
Best regards,
Irene

Postby Graphcat on Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:16 pm

Irene, you didn’t mention the version of WP your father is using, but just about every version has problems with the envelope feature, and works better using format/ page to select the paper type. So upgrading isn’t really an issue. But the service packs on the FTP site will generally help; they fix lots of small bugs that aren’t usually listed in the description of the patch.

Whoa. I just read what you wrote again. “An upgrade to XP Home from Win98.” In other words, a computer that dates to before Windows Me is now walking (not running) Windows XP? Yikes. My rule is that everything on a computer should be around the same age. I wouldn’t load XP on anything slower than 800Mhz, and there weren’t many boxes that came with 98 on them that are at that speed level.

Let’s forget my disbelief at the bad advice he received. Your father needs to find the icon for WP, right-click it, go to Properties, and look for the ‘Compatibility’ settings. In there, tell XP to treat that program as if it were running in Win Me, and to ‘disable themes’. That will solve lots of issues with old WP versions in XP.

Jerry Stern
Moderator and Webmaster
Author of Graphcat and FileTiger
http://www.startupware.com
http://www.filetiger.com
https://www.graphcat.com