drawn over these return rollers 38 39 the endless belts 40 and feed plates 22 are positioned and driven with control in such a way that they are driven synchronously u2014 in other words at the same longitudinal position u2014 in each handling stage of the conveyor motor 41 and controller 42 are indicated schematically by broken rectangles in the manner of a block diagram in fig2 the properties of the controller 42 with respect to the driving of the guide walls 21 and therefore of the feed plates 22 have already been discussed in detail in the introduction of the description so do not need further explanation here the return rollers 38 39 are also mounted on a transverse adjusting device 43 by means of which the two guide walls 21 are mounted with their lateral spacing a on the work table formed by the base 10 and work surface 11 the strapping device can therefore be adapted to various formats of the stack of periodicals 4 by means of this transverse adjusting device 43 together with the expanse of the guide walls 21 in the conveyance direction r virtually over the entire length 1 of the work surface 11 the stack of periodicals 4 is guided cleanly through the strapping machine 12 throughout its passage as seen.