Database Error in Excel

[ND4SPD]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I have a database of names (lets say 50). When I want to send out a form letter in Word and use a portion of these names (lets say 10) by deleting those I don't want from the original document or cutting and pasting those I do want into a new document. I then do a print merge (form letter) in Word and it will print all 50 documents when I only wanted 10.
When I look at my data record (excel spreadsheet) it shows an asterisk in row 11 (instead of the number 11) and a highlighted border around all entries on that page.

What is going on here? I only want the 10 entries not 50.

 

[CyberTaz]

Well, to answer the "mystery border" first - the records are being
recognized as a List. I don't see why that should happen as the result of a
merge, which doesn't change anything about the data source. Is this a file
you created yourself or did it come from elsewhere? Did you use the List
Manager in Excel somewhere along the line?

As for the Merge, itself - no offense - you're going about it the long way
around and it's causing even further problems. If you're pasting the records
onto the same sheet Word will assume you want to use the list in the
upper-leftmost area of the sheet. It won't look at other lists on the same
sheet. You'd have to assign a Range Name to the data range occupied by the
data to be included & specify the range by name each time you do a merge. If
you paste them to a different sheet you need to indicate your data source
each time you merge & specify the sheet to be used. But that's probably all
unnecessary any way... At least if the records to be included have at least
one thing in common.

If you don't want to include all records you can work directly from within
Word. Step 4 of the Mail Merge Manager [Filter Recipients] provides features
to Sort and/or Filter the records as a part of the Merge process. Use that
to isolate the group of records to be included in each merge. Even if you
need to "hand-pick" the records each time it will be far easier this way:

Add a field to your Excel data & call it MM ( or whatever you prefer). When
it comes time to do a merge go to that field * put an X or a YES or
something in for the records to be included, clear the field for those to be
excluded, then close & save the file. Use the Filter in Word to include only
those from the source which contain the entry in the MM field.

Read up on Mail Merge in Word Help & review the On-Line Tutorials.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[ND4SPD]

All right let me define more. Somehow the LIST feature must be turned on. How do I turn it off? It is remembering that I have 50 rows of data in my original list and when I work on an edited form of that list I still keeps the original data somewhere.

 

[ND4SPD]

I like the suggestion to add a field in my database called Mail Merge. I tried it and then used the filtering option in Word and it worked great! Now as soon as I can figure out how to turn off list manager I will be extremely happy.

Thank You for the suggestion.

 

[ND4SPD]

I have now found out how to turn off List Manager for this database (by right clicking on a cell and choosing remove list manager). I found that while using Office 2004 for MAC Excel would quit writing data to a cell and I would have to save the document, close it and then reopen it to continue writing data in that cell. It seemed that List manager reduced the number of times I had to follow those steps. Since I have upgraded to Office 2008 I am not having those data entry problems.