Compound Salutations (Title Field) with Outlook 2003

[envywaits]

Using Outlook 2003, complete installation. There are no error
messages, warnings or any other nuisances to indicate an incomplete or
erroneous setup of Outlook 2003. With that said... here's what I need
help with:

Holiday season is upon us and so are people who want to do Holiday Card
mail merges with MS-Word and MS-Outlook. In my situation, the vast
majority of Holiday Cards are going to home addresses and a significant
number of these people are married. I'm looking for suggestions on how
to get the "Mr. and Mrs." or "Dr. and Mrs." etc. to come out properly
during the mail merge. I would prefer to use the existing Outlook 2003
Data Structure with minimal 'tweaking'. I am trying to -avoid-
creating extra contact entries for spouses or populating the spouse
field with the prefix "and Mrs." The idea is to keep only one contact
record for a given person which may have both a business and a home
address, but have Outlook know that when I'm using the Home Address in
the formal capacity of a Holiday Card, the proper salutation for a
married couple is "Mr. and Mrs.," "Dr. and Mrs.," etc.

So! I bring it to the readers and hope someone has a viable solution
or knows that Oulook 2003 has this capacity but it's been buried so
deep I simply cannot find it. Thank you!

--Patrick Hughes

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Why don't you just configure the Title field in the Outlook Contact Record
to be exactly what you want for each Contact you intend to include in the
merge? You do not have to accept Outlook's defaults. Just type in what you
want it to be.

 

[envywaits]

Russ, thank you very much for posting a reply. I do appreciate it.

I had considered your recommendation but here's the twist... Any given
contact record may be primarily a business contact, in which case
preserving the singular "Mr." or "Ms." is desirable for mailings to a
person's business address.

This is sounding more and more like I'll need to use a custom field for
Personal Salutations. Does that sound about right?

--Patrick

Why don't you just configure the Title field in the Outlook Contact Record
to be exactly what you want for each Contact you intend to include in the
merge? You do not have to accept Outlook's defaults. Just type in what you
want it to be.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Using Outlook 2003, complete installation. There are no error
messages, warnings or any other nuisances to indicate an incomplete or
erroneous setup of Outlook 2003. With that said... here's what I need
help with:

Holiday season is upon us and so are people who want to do Holiday Card
mail merges with MS-Word and MS-Outlook. In my situation, the vast
majority of Holiday Cards are going to home addresses and a significant
number of these people are married. I'm looking for suggestions on how
to get the "Mr. and Mrs." or "Dr. and Mrs." etc. to come out properly
during the mail merge. I would prefer to use the existing Outlook 2003
Data Structure with minimal 'tweaking'. I am trying to -avoid-
creating extra contact entries for spouses or populating the spouse
field with the prefix "and Mrs." The idea is to keep only one contact
record for a given person which may have both a business and a home
address, but have Outlook know that when I'm using the Home Address in
the formal capacity of a Holiday Card, the proper salutation for a
married couple is "Mr. and Mrs.," "Dr. and Mrs.," etc.

So! I bring it to the readers and hope someone has a viable solution
or knows that Oulook 2003 has this capacity but it's been buried so
deep I simply cannot find it. Thank you!

--Patrick Hughes

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

It's probably best if you post all of the information you want us to
consider up front instead of just making us guess what you're thinking and
trickling in relevant information a little at a time. We're all pretty busy
here. When you use a term like "business contact" that means you are using
BCM. Are you? If not, spell out your real question in painfully complete
detail.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Russ, thank you very much for posting a reply. I do appreciate it.

I had considered your recommendation but here's the twist... Any given
contact record may be primarily a business contact, in which case
preserving the singular "Mr." or "Ms." is desirable for mailings to a
person's business address.

This is sounding more and more like I'll need to use a custom field for
Personal Salutations. Does that sound about right?

--Patrick

Why don't you just configure the Title field in the Outlook Contact
Record
to be exactly what you want for each Contact you intend to include in the
merge? You do not have to accept Outlook's defaults. Just type in what
you
want it to be.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Using Outlook 2003, complete installation. There are no error
messages, warnings or any other nuisances to indicate an incomplete or
erroneous setup of Outlook 2003. With that said... here's what I need
help with:

Holiday season is upon us and so are people who want to do Holiday Card
mail merges with MS-Word and MS-Outlook. In my situation, the vast
majority of Holiday Cards are going to home addresses and a significant
number of these people are married. I'm looking for suggestions on how
to get the "Mr. and Mrs." or "Dr. and Mrs." etc. to come out properly
during the mail merge. I would prefer to use the existing Outlook 2003
Data Structure with minimal 'tweaking'. I am trying to -avoid-
creating extra contact entries for spouses or populating the spouse
field with the prefix "and Mrs." The idea is to keep only one contact
record for a given person which may have both a business and a home
address, but have Outlook know that when I'm using the Home Address in
the formal capacity of a Holiday Card, the proper salutation for a
married couple is "Mr. and Mrs.," "Dr. and Mrs.," etc.

So! I bring it to the readers and hope someone has a viable solution
or knows that Oulook 2003 has this capacity but it's been buried so
deep I simply cannot find it. Thank you!

--Patrick Hughes

 

[Karl Timmermans]

Short answer:

Outlook has no capability to/provision for:
#1 - Multiple saluations via standard fields
#2 - associate a different salutation with a given address type

This is a custom scenario which would have to be dealt with via a custom
field for a whole raft of reasons not the least of which are determination
of marital status (and whether or not a Mr. or Mrs is appropriate for a
person's given situation) or whether a primary contact who is a "Mrs." has a
Dr. or Mr. for a husband or whether where their are two different surnames
involved whatever the marital status etc. Just some sample things to think
about if you want to be completely correct when addressing the "household".

Karl
_____________________________________________________________
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0 / Exporter
"Power contact importers/exporters for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com

 

[envywaits]

Russ, Karl:

Thank you both for your comments and suggestions. Going to create a
custom field for handling salutations as they relate to correspondence
of a personal nature to a person/family whose primary relationship is
for business purposes.

--Patrick

 

[SmithBurn]

I'm having a similar problem in that many of my contacts are female yet I
need to address social correspondence as Mr. and Mrs. (male spouse name)
Lastname. The Title problem I can handle, but I can't use the Spouse field
or set up a customized field name inside the Full Name block. (If I
overwrite the First field in the Full Name block, it replaces my contact's
File as name.) Never had a problem with my old WORKS Address Book, but I
can't figure out how to get it done in OUTLOOK 2002.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Explain why you "can't use the Spouse field."

 

[SmithBurn]

Thank you very much for such a quick reply... Yes, I should be able to use
the Spouse field with Word mail-merge. I just have to think this through a
little differently...

Explain why you "can't use the Spouse field."
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

I'm having a similar problem in that many of my contacts are female yet I
need to address social correspondence as Mr. and Mrs. (male spouse name)
Lastname. The Title problem I can handle, but I can't use the Spouse
field
or set up a customized field name inside the Full Name block. (If I
overwrite the First field in the Full Name block, it replaces my contact's
File as name.) Never had a problem with my old WORKS Address Book, but I
can't figure out how to get it done in OUTLOOK 2002.