Mail Merge mix-up

I am not sure what you mean by "I use mail merge to print mailing labels directly onto my monthly newsletter". A label merge is meant to merge to labels and the relevance of the trays in this context is unclear.

However, if you have modified the data source, that change may not have been reflected in the merge. Set the merge document type to normal document and save it, then change the merge type back to labels (assuming it is actually labels that you are trying to merge to, rather than a 'letter' merge which your description of 'I use mail merge to print mailing labels directly onto my monthly newsletter' would suggest) and re-attach the data source. Save then merge again.

If you are actually 'printing' as opposed to e-mailing the finished document(s) then turn off background printing for the duration of the merge.

If you want separate documents for each record, then see http://www.gmayor.com/ManyToOne.htm in one to one mode. This is not a mail merge process but a process created entirely in vba and it will process the records as separate documents in the order they appear on the worksheet - including to the printer. Whatever tray allocations you have setup for the merge document will be retained for the print process.

As you can tell, I am a novice at this, and do not understand most of the computer language that I read on your website. I don't know if your "One to One" will help me or not because I don't understand "vba" and all the other computer teminology.

In explanation, I am not printing labels, form letters, or emailing anything. I am printing separate documents, each with an address block printed directly on it, not on labels. (Hand labeling 600+ newsletters is a huge time consumer.)  Printing the documents with correct information is not the problem.

But just so you'll have a better understanding of what I'm doing, here's how I have it set up. I have my address list set up in an Excel sheet, then saved in Data Sources for access in mail merge. My document is in Publisher, so I open the newsletter and go to Tools> Mailings> Mail merge.  I put the information into the address block on the outside newsletter page, where it will be seen when it is run off and folded for mailing. In this address block is the Post Office's bar code and other mailing information, which assigns each address to a mail tray according to location for distribution by the Post Office. All of this works fine.

The only reason this is relevant to my problem is that I need the addresses to print in the order I have entered them into the Excel worksheet. For whatever reason, Publisher has never printed these in the order as they are listed in the worksheet. Before using the bar codes, etc., the addresses were in alphabetical order.  When sent to the printer, they would be printed in groups of 10-20 in reverse order, or even jumping all over the worksheet to pull records out of order. Having to go back through to sort and reorganize 600+ newsletters and find the one or two that are mixed into the wrong group is very time consuming. (And it isn't the printer because we've acquired a new one and the problem did not change.) Getting desperate. I am just hoping there's is something simple that I am missing that can fix this issue.