Foreign Country Label Mail Merge

[MLange]

When I do a mail merge using an Excel 2003 the information for China and
Japan gets mixed up. Only those two countries. How can I stop that from
happening?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Can you spell out what is going wrong in a bit more detail? Is the data
appearing incorrectly? If so, how? Or are you doing something like using the
ADDRESSBLOCK field and getting addresses for the wrong countries? Or what?

 

[MLange]

I run a mail merge, choose 8163 labels, choose my excel data file, check my
recipient list which puts <<Next Record>> in the document, choose Address
Block, use Joshua @. Randal Jr. as recipient's name format, match fields
using LN, FN CO., ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, ZIP, COUNTRY; then update labels,
preview labels and then complete the merge. Edit individual labels, all, and
the labels come out like this.
MOSES
WODILA
EBENEZER GOSPEL MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
PO BOX 212
TORORO, UGANDA
E AFRICA
This one is correct.


JAPAN
343-0041
SAITAMAKOSHIGAYAKOSHOJI BUILDING, 1-9-5 NISHI SENGENDAI
VICTORY WORD CHURCH - JAPAN
WOLFEPATRICK


this last one should be:
Patrick Wolfe
Victory WOrd Church - Japan
Koshoji Building, 1-9-5 Nishi Sengendai
Koshigaya Saitama 343-004
Japan

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I don't know whether it is possible to fix this using the Address Block
field, but that particular field has never really performed what it should.
The trouble is that the alternative, which is to use the individual fields,
is complicated if you need a different layout for each country.

I would do one of the following:
a. separate my merge into two parts, (possibly "China/Japan" and "the
rest") and do two, or if necessary, three different layouts. You should be
able to use the Country field to select the records for each merge
b. see if the ADDRESSBLOCK works the way you need it if you omit the
country, then add the country as a separate merge field underneath
c. move towards individual merge fields - for that, I suggest you see
Graham Mayor's article at

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

Look for the section titled

Insert field information and associated text conditionally

Peter Jamieson

 

[MLange]

I just ran the merge again and I noticed that the India labels were missing
the state. In excel there are LN, FN CO., ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, ZIP, COUNTRY
fields. the state cell for india is not printing but is putting a - in its
place.

Is the problem in the fact that I am using Word 2003 on a machine using
Vista as the operating system? Thanks.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I don't believe the problem is to do with Vista, but I'm not in a position
to check right now. The trouble with the ADDRESSBLOCK field is that it does
not really work as advertised - users in the U.S., with U.S. Address lists,
seem to be able to use it without too many problems, but some of its
facilities do not apear to work as advertised. That's why people in here
generally suggest that you "use individual fields instead." Trouble is that
that is probably not going to help if you are mailing to lots of different
countries - there are several official layout patterns for addresses
worldwide (at least 8, I think). However, I suspect that postal services
will probably manage anything in latin script that has something like

name
Street address
City, region, postal code
Country

Even though the local standard may be different.

If you press Alt-F9 in Word you should see the field show up as {
ADDRESSBLOCK <a set of address layout patterns> then some switches like \d }

I do not think it will help to insert/remove \d but it is probably worth
trying.

Peter Jamieson

 

[DaveClarkI]

When I do a mail merge using an Excel 2003 the information for China and
Japan gets mixed up. Only those two countries. How can I stop that from
happening?

They aren't really "mixed up." Those countries use a different address
block format. You can ignore those country's address block requirements by
editing the address block field and unckecking the option to format the
address block according to the destination country's requirements. To do
that, right-click the address block field and select "Edit Address Block." A
dialog box is displayed where you can uncheck that option.

The actual problem, though, is that (as mentioned) the country-specific
address block formatting is buggy. I just noticed, in the last two days, the
same problem as you. I recognized the reversed format as being correct for
JAPAN, but the problem is that there are missing spaces between sub-fields
and missing line-feeds to separate street address information from the city
and state/province information.

I'd still like Microsoft to fix the problem but, like you must, I unchecked
the country-specific formatting option in the mean-time. ;-)