Name Drop Xpress

[Uma Duffy]

We are considering purchasing this software (an add-in to Corel) to expedite production of trophy plates, name tags and other similar jobs. Lots of engravers complain of unpredictable results when they attempt file merges in Corel and this program is supposed to address that. I'd be interested to hear if others have found this helpful and if it's worth the $399 price tag. I don't mind spending the money if it does a bang up job....but this add-in costs more than the original Corel program. I would love to take a customer's Word file or Excel file and load it right in to Corel thereby avoiding spelling errors and eliminate time spent retyping other variable info. Reviews?

[Mike Null]

First, there's no reason for you to copy and type when you can copy and paste.

Second, the merge function in Corel does work but it takes some practice.

Third, there are some free macros available which work well. If you send me a pm I'll tell you where to get a good one.

Fourth, I can't imagine spending that kind of money for such an item. It'll never pay for itself.

My primary business is name tags and I never type one.

[Gary Hair]

Second, the merge function in Corel does work but it takes some practice.

I just finished a batch of 56 plaques and the merge function in Corel sucks! It is so finicky about the order you do things that it was nothing but a pain. The first batch was ruined when the names all printed twice on the same line. The second batch was ruined when the merge failed and it printed the <name> instead of the actual name...

Once I figured out the exact sequence that Corel likes, it worked fine.

I would pay a bit to get something a little less "fragile", similar to how merge works in Word (which is pretty flawless in my 15+ years of experience) - but not likely to spend $400!

Gary

[Shaddy Dedmore]

I made a macro to help with name tags and importing text.

http://www.shaddysengraving.com/laser/nametagcreator/

I've had some beta testers and their output has all been about the same, "it's too confusing". I haven't taken the time to clean things up because it's beyond my ability, i think. Even if it's not, I've already put tooooooo much time into it and it would take a LOT to go back and fix things.

My advice, skip the "Create Name Tag" portion, that's mainly for me anyway. Go to that link and check out the example at the end of the page and see if that's close to what you want. Then go back and look at the rest of the tutorial that describes each feature in detail if it is.


This is made to create everything on a CDR first, then print... it doesn't do any merging WHILE printing. THat's the way I prefer it so that's what I concentrated on.

Shaddy

[Seth Gecko]

We have namedrop and works well, we also use badges in engravelab they seem to work about the same for us. we use namedrop for the people that work off site so they can set up jobs.

[Brad Bice]

Namedrop Xpress is terrible. I have had nothing but problems with it and gave up because it takes too much time and too much fiddling with. Badges in Engravelab is much cleaner, much more efficient and just plain works the way it's supposed to.

I would definitely steer clear of Namedrop Xpress unless they've had a major breakthrough in UI and overall program workings.

[Bill Cunningham]

I just tell my customers to send me their name list in a plain text email.. (not a .doc file or some other useless format).. i.e.
name
name
name
name
etc..

Then just highlight, cut, and paste into corel. change the font to what ever you need, if you have used a particular font before, just use the copy properties from, command in the edit menu to match the previous text. then use the break apart command to convert to individual names and put them where they are supposed to go on the badges(cntrl E C).. I know this is a bit more involved than some fancy merge program, and I have used it to do up to 100 badges on a setup.. How often do you get orders for 50 to 100 badges.. certainly not worth spending hundreds of dollars for yet another piece of software..AND, the customer is responsible for the name spelling, which can save you a whole bunch of bucks over the years..

[Darryl Hazen]

Roy Brewer has a couple of tutorials on print merging in Corel.

http://www.engravingconcepts.com/flash_coreldraw.htm

[Uma Duffy]

Roy's tutorials are excellent... but I think the whole procedure has entirely too many steps. I wouldn't use NameDrop for just badges....I could use it every day for trophy plates and big plaque orders that have one or two lines of variable text. MS Word is so much easier and more reliable...I wish Corel could make the whole merge thing more straightforward. Someday.....