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Envelope Genie from HELL!

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    Envelope Genie from HELL!

    Use Alpha4 Version 4.5 Each time I use the envelope Genie it designs a lable
    8.5 by 11 inches. When I adjust the margins I recieve an error message informing me that the object (the name address city state etc) is outside the printer margins...
    Alpha offers me an opportunity to delete the object which is basically the envelope label. (nice feature)

    The first envelope prints fine (using the original Genie settings)

    The printer then commences to spit out an endless stream of envelopes without printing another address... Finally the printer (an epson inkjet) goes into shock and print an stream of meaningless characters...

    Touch doing a 1000 peice mailing like this!?? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated

    Hunter

    #2
    RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

    I could never figure out how to get the envelope aligned properly for my printer and understand your frustration, Hunter. I get around all of this by creating labels and placing them on the envelopes. That is much easier than dealing with envelopes anyway. I have even created a series of reports for individual labels at the location of each of the labels on half of a page of labels. I have a form with buttons labeled from 1-15 which pops up when a button is pushed on my form and prints the label for the person or company on my screen at the point on the page which corresponds to the number I selected. (I hate to waste anything and can use up leftover labels this way.) I can quickly and easily print labels for individual records or for a group of records and then peel them off the page and affix them to the envelope(s). It would be nice if the envelope feature could be made more "user friendly" and reliable though.

    Hopefully someone else will come up with a clear explanation of how to use the envelope feature.


    Sylvia

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

      Well I did a 160 envelopes on Monday got the thing figured in about 10 minutes, mostly as I wanted a logo on the return address part... BUT it didn't go quite as expected.

      I used the genie, asked for a #10 envelope, fed in through the center of the bay, end first.

      I got an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet with what looked like an envelope sized label in the middle. I printed a test 8 1/2 x 11 sheet and the info was OK, so I ran a test envelope.

      The printing missed the test envelope by about two inches. The return address was in the middle, the mail address had the name and the rest missed the envelope...

      I went to the envelope design and moved the entire label sideways about two inches. OK, I pulled out a ruler and measured from the edge of the printer feed tray to where the first printing began, then used the rulers in the envelope editor to move everything accordingly.

      That did it. Except I had to ride shot gun on the envelope feeder as they wanted to twist sideways as they got pulled in...

      I am using an HP 2100 se laser printer. I am not that impressed with HP drivers, though they performed flawlessly in this instance...

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

        The envelope genie sometimes leads you astray. You might try placing a page change object after the address on the envelope to force a change. Last week I wanted to place a conditional address on an envelope but the envelope doesn't have a conditional object. I found I could create an envelope in the report generator and had pretty good control over the printer.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

          I installed another copy the laser printer and named it "envelope" printer. I then set the paper type for #10 envelope. Then I use this printer for the envelope printer in alpha. Using this method has caused most of the headaches of printing envelopes in alpha to disappear.

          I print 1000 to 2000 envelopes on an HP4000. You still have to baby sit because most printers have difficult times handling the thickness of envelopes. Jams and envelope twisting is not unusual for the better quality paper envelopes. There may be a laser printer type envelope out there that would make this easier.


          Bob Sullivan

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

            ALL:

            I don't have 4.5 but have been successfully priting envelopes in 4.03 thus......

            Made a report with the return address & logo and fields for the name, address, city, and state. Then I kept trimming the size of the paper, used shrink options, and jacked it around on three different formats [different logo and company names in the return address]. Had to do the shrink stuff to keep it from feeding extra blank envelopes at each print. Doin' it all on an Epson 640. Sounds like the 'genie' requires the same amount of jacking around.

            Once 'debugged' (and let's face it - Debug is another name for incessant trial-and-error)the envelopes print one at a time in whatever order I set the sort parameters.

            Patience and Persistance is the key.

            Kenno the newbie

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

              Sylvia,

              Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions... I do a lot of direct mailing and I've found the best way to get my marketing pieces opened to to keep the look of the mailing as far from "Junk Mail" as possible.

              A label on an envelope yells "Junk" and my response rate is much lower... the cost of each piece goes up with a label too!

              However, I found a solution to my dellemma... yipee!! I export the records I need to an excel file and then use "word" mail merge to print the envelopes. Yes it would be nice if the Genie was kinder...

              Guess I just leave him corked in his bottle... (or maybe he is a she?)

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

                Stephen,

                Thanks for replying to my question... Moving the lable around didn't help me... Maybe a problem with a epson driver...

                Finally ended up exporting the records that I need to an excel file and use the "word" mailmerge feature to print the envelopes...

                Hunter

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Envelope Genie from HELL!

                  Ohlen,

                  Thanks for your help... Am going to try to experiment with your suggesstion shortly. Maybe I can get the Genie to do my bidding after all!

                  Hunter

                  Comment

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