Help needed with MailMerge.

[Chris Mitchell]

Using MS Word and Excel 2002 SP3.



I have created a large Excel spreadsheet that comprises six sheets, each of
which has many columns - one goes out to column CM, of data items.



I'm now trying to create a Word MailMerge document to present the data.
This is proving to be tedious, since for each item I have to

1.. click 'More items.' in the Mail Merge sidebar, which opens a dialogue
box which I can
2.. scroll through to select the relevant data item,
3.. then Insert it,
4.. then close the dialogue box,
5.. go to the next field in my Word document and go through the whole
process again.

All this opening, scrolling, selecting, inserting and closing 'More items.'
is time consuming and tedious.



Is there a better/easier way of doing this, if so what is it?

 

[Chris Mitchell]

I've noticed that the data items in my Spreadsheet have been given default
names and since many of these are repeated the names increment by 1 for each
instance, ie I've got

A set of Entry, Review and Exit which is repeated 34 times, so I have data
names Entry 0 through to 34, Review 0 through to 34, Exit 0 through to 34.



If I copy and paste these within Word then go back and increment the numbers
manually will this work correctly when I come to produce the individual
reports? Or do I always have to select from the Mail Merge sidebar dialogue
list?

 

[Chris Mitchell]

I've noticed that the data items in my Spreadsheet have been given default
names and since many of these are repeated the names increment by 1 for each
instance, ie I've got

A set of Entry, Review and Exit which is repeated 34 times, so I have data
names Entry 0 through to 34, Review 0 through to 34, Exit 0 through to 34.



If I copy and paste these within Word then go back and increment the numbers
manually will this work correctly when I come to produce the individual
reports? Or do I always have to select from the Mail Merge sidebar dialogue
list?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

If I copy and paste these within Word then go back and increment the
numbers

manually will this work correctly when I come to produce the individual
reports?

Yes, but you must edit the underlying field codes, which look like {
MERGEFIELD xyz } and so on - use Alt-F9 to see them. If you try to edit
<<xyz>> it may look as if you have succeeded but in fact Word eventually
throws away those "edits".

 

[Debra Dalgleish]

You can add the Insert Merge Field button to your Mail Merge toolbar
(Tools>Customize, Commands tab, Mail Merge category)

This creates a dropdown list of merge fields that you can use to insert
fields quickly.

 

[Chris Mitchell]

Thanks.

Spotted this after I'd discovered that you can insert several fields into
the document at the same time then drag and drop individual items to where
you want them.

This cuts down considerably on the amount of work involved.

 

[Chris Mitchell]

Thanks.

Found out that Word dumps your edits the hard way!