Is There A Way To Merge (Not Append) Two CDR Files?

Jeff~ I can't thank you enough for the amout of work you put into this for me. So thorough and detailed! Much appreciated, sir. Your method solves my problem 100% for one of my projects--the one where the multi-page template doesn't change except for the prices. I didn't know Corel could do a PrintMerge across multiple pages. That's HUGE. This method won't work for my regular, monthly project because the entire multi-page template changes each month and usually contains 300+ pages. I could turn it into a multi-page template, but the gain isn't worth the upfront work.

You've got me thinking, though. George The Sign Guy could be correct--I'm overthinking this.

Thanks again, Jeff!

Regards,

MWHarris

MWHarris said:

Jeff~ I can't thank you enough for the amount of work you put into this for me. So thorough and detailed! Much appreciated, sir.

You're welcome. I like CorelDRAw merge stuff. So much, that macromonster.com was the first company to provide the best variable imaging inside Coreldraw. Now, I have 4 different programs that do that on my system. What does this mean? Depending on the tool, you can insert text, photos, barcodes all on the fly. Some even support vector shapes, which allows you to quickly colorize backgrounds of resulting pages for various purposes.

As for your monthly project, I could probably come up with an idea for you, but I'd need to know more about that project.

Jeff~ Thanks for offering further support--much appreciated! My apologies if this is long. Please bear with me.

For the montlhly project, our company puts, say, 300 items on sale. I generate all the signs by using PrintMerge. The sign "batch" is generated from a CSV file. All I have to do is manually tweak the item descriptions because we prefer the lines of text to line break in a logical way:

WAHL
DELUXE CHROME
25-PIECE
COMPLETE PRO HAIRCUT KIT

Traditionally, all the stores in our chain have had the same pricing. Now we're moving to regional pricing, so I'll have to create more than one 300 sign "batch". I'm trying to avoid having to tweak all those descriptions all over again, probably for at least three "batches".

The idea I have is to make one batch with all three prices layered on top of each other--but INVISIBLE (no outline, no fill). That way, I tweak the descriptions one time and I only have to make the prices visible for a particular region and print it.

I figured out how to code the macro to fill the invisible price text on Layer 1 with CMYK black on each page of the document, but I can only do it if I have a line of code to account for each page. So I'm going to have 300 lines of code like this (I'm only showing 5 here):

********************************************************************************
Sub TemporaryMacro()
' Recorded 7/7/2015
Dim s As Shape
Dim p As Page
For Each p In ActiveDocument.Pages
p.Activate
ActiveDocument.Pages(1).Layers("Layer 1").Shapes(1).Fill.UniformColor.CMYKAssign 60, 40, 40, 100
ActiveDocument.Pages(2).Layers("Layer 1").Shapes(1).Fill.UniformColor.CMYKAssign 60, 40, 40, 100
ActiveDocument.Pages(3).Layers("Layer 1").Shapes(1).Fill.UniformColor.CMYKAssign 60, 40, 40, 100
ActiveDocument.Pages(4).Layers("Layer 1").Shapes(1).Fill.UniformColor.CMYKAssign 60, 40, 40, 100
ActiveDocument.Pages(5).Layers("Layer 1").Shapes(1).Fill.UniformColor.CMYKAssign 60, 40, 40, 100
For Each s In ActivePage.Shapes.FindShapes()
If s.Outline.Type = cdrNoOutline And s.Fill.Type = cdrNoFill Then
sr.Add s
End If
Next s
Next p
End Sub
********************************************************************************

With this method, I would have to use several versions of this macro. I'd have one that turns the prices on Layer 1 visible (NY pricing), print the document, revert the CDR file, then use another version to activate the prices on Layer 2 (New Jersey).

I'd really like to avoid having 300 lines of repetitive code. I tried starting the line with a page range like this, but I get an error:

ActiveDocument.Pages(1-300)


Is there a way to structure the code so that I don't need to specify every page in the document? I would think I could set it up to just step through the document.

Thoughts?

Thanks again for any help!

Hello Mek~

Thanks for taking the time to assist. You gave me the key part that I was looking for--to have a single line of code that steps through the entire document instead of writing a line of code for each page. I needed:

ActiveDocument.Pages(i).Layers("Layer 1")
Next i

I just tested it and it's exactly what I wanted.

I'll look into the "publish to PDF" functionality, as well.

Thanks again--much appreciated!

Have a great day!


Regards,

MW