Transferring addresses from database to label pages

[RonS17]

This is my first post as I've only just acquired Open Office. I have a MS Access dbase which holds my Christmas card addresses and I'm hoping to be able to produce labels which will eliminate all that penpushing at Christmas time.

I've managed to get the file accepted as an .odb and with the objective of creating pages of labels - ten different addresses to a page - have followed the instructions for creating labels as given in the HELP section.

I have no difficulty in dragging fields from the dbase file to the top left label and creating a neat looking label, but up to now have not been able to persuade all the other 99 addresses to follow suit by occupying the rest of the label sheet(s).

INSERT/FIELDS/OTHER and NEXT RECORD followed by CLOSE seems to do nothing and if I use SYNCHRONISE I end up with a page with ten identical addresses.

Help Please ! What do I need to do to trigger the transfer of the rest of the data. I feel I'm missing something that must be obvious. I don't seem to be able to find the TABLE DATA BAR and the DATA TO FIELDS icon which are mentioned in the next part of the instructions - perhaps that's the vital bit. Thanks in Anticipation RonS17

[thomasjk]

This article should help greatly http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/mail_merge_openoffice_org . The Help for mail merge is best ignored.

[JohnV]

The help for labels is even worse when labels can be so easy.

At File > New > Labels on the label tab select your database and table from the drop down menus by those boxes. Below that select your field names, one at a time, and move to the left with the arrow.

On the left side you can do basic editing like inserting spaces and paragraph breaks.

Go to the Options tab and check Synchronize. Then do New Document. Do not worry about the Next Record field - OOo supplies it automatically when you do things this way.

With some plain paper do a trial run of your labels. Click the Print icon, answer 'yes' to the 'form letter' query. In the dialog that follows All records is the default but you can also select records with the boxes to their left.

If you need to edit the labels then you change the upper left one and use Synchronize to pass that edit alone to all other labels. Note that nowhere in this have I mentioned the F4 key - you simply don't need to use it.

[RonS17]

Thanks to thomasjk and JohnV for their rapid responses. I've read the articles and gained a lot of informatiom. But , John , it was your use of the words "field names" which set me off on the right road to progress. My No.1 Big Mistake was to assume that I needed to drag actual data into the top left label. Once I'd realised that it was field names that needed dragging I made some progress and the page of 10 different addresses appearing on the label page was a big moment.

A moment slightly spoiled by the fact that the first line of my addresses did not print. All others were OK but my FSTLINE was somehow not acceptable. Entering the fields into the label creation box gave every FIELD NAME a full title which included Database Name and Table Name as well as Field Name. When the labels were synchronised the preceeding portion of their titles dropped off and just left the FIELD NAME portion - ADD1 or ADD2 or whatever. All EXCEPT FSTLINE that field retained its Database and Table titles. Consequently when the actual data was INSERTed no data was entered into the FSTLINE positions.

Can you think of any reason why this should be ? Is it a reserved word ? I've tried the field in other label positions and it still does n't get accepted.

Did think I'd try changing the field name, but haven't yet learnt enough to do it in Open Office and have no working ACCESS progarms at the moment.

All suggestions gratefully accepted. RonS17