Creating lists with mail merge

[mad-asian]

I want to create a mail merge that will generate a list in word. For
example, I have an excel spreadsheet that lists my students' names and
various other information. My class roster changes daily, so I need to
print out a new class list everyday. I want word to generate a class
list based on the Excel fields I use in the merge. Basically, I don't
want one page per student. I want all of my students listed on the same
page along with their student IDs, DOBs, etc. I also need to have hard
coded text above and below the list.

Is this possible?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It's harder than it ought to be.

The problem with doing this using MailMerge is dealing with this bit,
especially if you want your data to be in a table. If you have Access, you
should definitely consider Access reporting for this.

I also need to have hard
coded text above and below the list.

One way to deal with it is to have two documents:
a. a mail merge main document (use the "Directory" type mail merge) that
generates the list that you want. Use this to merge to a new document which
you will always save as myoutput.doc
b. a second document that contains the hard coded text above and below, and
uses an INCLUDETEXT field to include myoutput.doc in the middle.

Then, do the merge, save myoutput.doc, open the second document, select the
contents (e.g. ctrl-A), press F9 to execute that INCLDETEXT field, and you
should have your document.

Another possibility if the layout can be simple and tabular would be to use
a DATABASE field to insert the Excel data, rather than doing a mail merge.
This would be similar to the document in (b) but instead of that INCLUDETEXT
field, you would have a DATABASE field that specifies the Excel sheet as the
data source, specifies which columns you want, the sort order and some basic
table format options. In this case you would open the document, select the
content (e.g. ctrl-A), press F9 to execute that DATABASE field, and you
should have your document.

You can insert a DATABASE field using the DATABASE toolbar (try
View|Toolbars to enable it) and ensure you check the Insert as field option
at the end of the dialog. However, DATABASE fields do not always work as you
might expect - sometimes they can be fixed by modifying the field code
manually, and sometimes they cannot.