P
Patrick Finucane
Hi. Sorry if I am posting to the wrong newsgroup but I received such
good information here I thought I'd try here first.
Let's say you have an company record that consists of a
1) contact name which can consist of a salutation (Mr/Mrs, etc), the
firstname, the last name, and a suffix (Jr/Sr etc) and
2) the company name and
3) 2 address lines and
4) the city, state, and zip codes fields.
This data will be coming from an Access table. In order to keep it
generic (let the user define the fields that will be merged) do you
separate the fields into individual components or do you maybe create a
query that concatenates the fields?
The reason I ask is that the fields for the name and the fields for the
city/state/zip can be easily concatenated. At the same timethe contact
name fields could be blank and the 2nd address line could be blank. I
would want the blank field lines to be suppressed.
Would it be best to present to the user 5 merge fields;
CompanyLine1....CompanyLine5 and then store the contact name field in
CompanyLine1 if there is a name otherwise store the Company name in that
field and then start shifting all the data up 1 CompanyLine field
depending whether or not it has data? Thus if the 2nd address line was
blank, the city/state/zip data would occupy the that field and
CompanyLine5 would be blank?
Or is it best to present each data field to stand on its own and let the
user do all the shifting? I haven't done much in mail merge and I don't
know how much of a hassle it will be to a user to create a mail merge
letter that would suppress some of these fields. I want it to keep it
as easy for the user as possible but maintain as much flexibility to the
application.
good information here I thought I'd try here first.
Let's say you have an company record that consists of a
1) contact name which can consist of a salutation (Mr/Mrs, etc), the
firstname, the last name, and a suffix (Jr/Sr etc) and
2) the company name and
3) 2 address lines and
4) the city, state, and zip codes fields.
This data will be coming from an Access table. In order to keep it
generic (let the user define the fields that will be merged) do you
separate the fields into individual components or do you maybe create a
query that concatenates the fields?
The reason I ask is that the fields for the name and the fields for the
city/state/zip can be easily concatenated. At the same timethe contact
name fields could be blank and the 2nd address line could be blank. I
would want the blank field lines to be suppressed.
Would it be best to present to the user 5 merge fields;
CompanyLine1....CompanyLine5 and then store the contact name field in
CompanyLine1 if there is a name otherwise store the Company name in that
field and then start shifting all the data up 1 CompanyLine field
depending whether or not it has data? Thus if the 2nd address line was
blank, the city/state/zip data would occupy the that field and
CompanyLine5 would be blank?
Or is it best to present each data field to stand on its own and let the
user do all the shifting? I haven't done much in mail merge and I don't
know how much of a hassle it will be to a user to create a mail merge
letter that would suppress some of these fields. I want it to keep it
as easy for the user as possible but maintain as much flexibility to the
application.