Duplicating parameters in filters

[PhenyxFire]

Hello!
I know there have been a couple of posts regarding the duplicating of filter
parameters. Unfortunately, both answers of using Access or set up SKIPIF
field codes will not work for me as I have over 200 documents set up for
merges at 57 employee's desks and don't have the time to set up a SKIPIF
field code at each employee's desk. The Access use will not work because the
info is pulled from an AS/400 system and put directly into Excel to feed the
merge doc in Word. Before we switched from 2000 to 2007 we never had a
problem with duplicating parameters in the filters so it's very frustrating
that a good product no longer works properly. Makes me think MS didn't
QA/test the merge filters.

90% of the merges have the same three parameters used (Equal To, Not Equal
To, and Is Not Blank, with "And" used for each one). It doesn't matter what
order I put them in, at least two of them duplicate each time and end up with
"Or" instead of "And," as well as show the opposite parameter that was
originally chosen. It really messes things up and the users end up having to
manually type the info that would normally be merged. It's a daily struggle
and a serious headache to get the merges done correctly as some of the users
have upwards of 100 entries they now have to type manually when all they had
to do was merge and print in the past with 2000.

Does any one have any additional suggestions? I would appreciate anything.
Thank you so much in advance!

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I would agree that it is a difficult situation to deal with.

If your users need to be able to specify these filter conditions on an
ad-hoc basis, there really is no particularly simple solution, unless
you are able to retain Word 2000 for the desktops that need it.

The choices available to you depend partly on why you need the filters.

If the problems are occurring because your users need to be able to
define the filter conditions in Word on an ad-hoc basis, then I suspect
that the only thing that is likely to work is to tell them how to use
the old DDE connection method that was the default in Word 2000. And
even that does not necessarily work in Word 2007.

If you are able to predefine all the queries that your company needs,
things are a little different, although there could still be a
substantial modification/test job ahead. In this case there are a few
approaches you could investigate, e.g.
a. use Word VBA to define the SQL queries you need for each document.
b. use Access to import or link to your data, and define the necessary
queries in Access
c. import your data into something else that doesn't suffer from this
problem, or which would also allow you to define the queries you need
(e.g. the current free, "lite" version of SQL Server.

I know you said Access wasn't a solution because your data is being
converted from AS400 to Excel, but if you have Access, IMO it would at
least be feasible either to import that Excel data into an Access
database or to link to it. But the feasibility of that may also depend
on how frequently the data is shipped over from the AS400. You might
even be able to share your Access DB across your network (although that
appears to be nother problem area for Word 2007).

And then there's the { SKIPIF } solution, but bear in mind that it won't
work for anything where the mail merge main document uses multiple
records, such as labels.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[macropod]

Hi Peter,

I think you'll find {SKIPIF} can be made to work for labels - if you use a Directory/Catalog merge with a suitable multi-column
document using a single-celled table for the merge.