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Using Manually Controlled Printing

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This section describes how to use the Set Up Postcard Contents (Marketing-8-1) option. This item is first on the menu because it is the option you will use most often. Before you can print your postcards, you must set up postcards. See the Using the Marketing Setup article for more information.

Use the following steps to print postcards that you set up:

  1. On the Main Menu, select Marketing Menu.
  2. Select Manually Controlled Printing (1) to receive the Enter postcard number to print prompt.
  3. Type the number of the postcard you want to print, and press [Enter]. For our example, we will use postcard 6 which we have set up as a basic Thank You postcard.
Note: If you do not know the number of the card you want to print, press [F1] for a list of all postcards currently on your system.
  1. You receive a screen similar to the following. This screen displays the first 10 lines of the postcard to allow you to identify and confirm you have selected the correct postcard.

  1. If this is the postcard that you want to print, type Y at the Is this correct? prompt. If not, type N and return to step 3 above.
  2. The screen that appears depends on whether the postcard you selected is in basic or advanced format. Do one of the following:
  • If this is a basic postcard, go to step 7.
  • If this is an advanced postcard, you receive three screens of information about the postcard. These screens allow you to change the postcard search guidelines for this particular postcard run, if necessary. Go to the Advanced Postcard Manual Printing article.
  1. The system uses the criteria you defined when you set up the postcard in Set Up Postcard Contents (Marketing-8-1). You see messages on your screen similar to the following:

Selecting vehicles for printing… please wait.
904 records read 213 selected 7 incomplete addresses

Note: If a customer record does not have the first line of address, the ZIP/postal code, or the state abbreviation filled in, it is marked as an incomplete address. Postcards that contain incomplete addresses do not print. You will have an option after the postcards print to print a report containing the addresses that the system considers to be incomplete.
  1. When the records are selected, you receive a screen similar to the following.

Note: To test the alignment and format of your postcards, press [F10]. You receive the following prompt: How many cards do you wish to produce (1-5)? Type the number of test postcards you want to print, and press [Enter] to print out sample postcards with X’s instead of data where you have the replacement codes. For example, if you have <NA> for the customer’s first and last name, the sample postcard prints XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX instead.
  1. This screen explains how many items you have to print. Because you have several choices on this screen, each option is explained in the Advanced Postcard Manual Printing article. Use the list below to determine the section you need.
To Type: For more information, see:
Print the selected postcards P Printing Selected Postcards
Send the selected postcards to a file on your hard disk F Sending Selected Postcards to File
Send the selected postcards to a file in MS-DOS format M Sending Selected Postcards to File