Labels

 Well it didn't take Ellie long to find Poppy the Elf. The Gorse Fox will have to be more inventive next week.

She was only with us for a few hours today as Urban-Cub had to take her across to spend the weekend with Pistol Pete.

The Silver Vixen produced the piles of boxes of Xmas Cards. It was time for the Gorse Fox to go and prepare the envelope labels. This is never quite as easy as it should be. 

Stage one: the Gorse Fox checks that the addresses in his spreadsheet match those in his Google Contacts list - just in case there were any house moves he had forgotten to transcribe. 

Stage two: create the rough list and print it so that the Silver Vixen can go through and double check that we have everyone we should. 

Stage Three: set the flags in the spreadsheet to show who will get a card. 

Stage Four: Open MS Word and start a MailMerge for labels. S

tage Five: start Googling how to successfully suppress blank lines. 

Stage Six: try it. 

Stage Seven: See Stage Five. 

Stage Eight: see Stage Six. 

Stage Nine: Create the labels. 

Stage Ten: Print the labels (remember to load the printer label-side down). 

Stage Eleven: take labels to the Silver Vixen. 

Stage Twelve: return to study and document the whole process (complete with screen shots) ready for next year.

Why this is such a pain is quite beyond the Gorse Fox. In the old days it used to "just work" but at some point the code was changed and it became an annual project to try and get it right. Certainly, what the Gorse Fox did this year is different from last year, and the year before. At least it's now documented along with screen shots.

With the labels done, we sat down and started writing our cards. Most are now done and ready to post.