Help with Labels in Microsoft Word

[mina.y.kim]

Hello,
I recently switched from a PC to a Mac.
I am in the process of inputing addresses into Microsoft Word. I used
the "Labels" option, but now I need to insert more addresses
alphabetically to the
existing document. I believe I can add on labels, but I cannot move
labels over to keep everything alphabetically ordered. It is from my
understanding that I have to put the new addresses into a new document
and merge that with the existing document. Thus, my question is what
are the instructions for a Mac user? Is there another way other than
merging the documents?
I am not too familar with Excel, but is there a way to type labels in
that program where I can add on addresses later?

Thank you so much!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Mina,

Welcome to the Mac!

Depending on how you need the labels alphabetized, you may be able to use
Table | Insert (Rows or Cells) to add new blanks in the appropriate places
in your existing label documents. Labels are just tables preformatted to
fit the label template. You can also select the text in a table cell (or
more than one) and drag and drop it into blank cells. Or you could use Table
| Delete | Cells to get rid of blank cells and move the whole column up one.
This would be quite a bit of manual shuffling and probably tedious, but
could get the job done. You might test Table | Insert | Rows or Table |
Insert | Cells ON A COPY of the document to see if that approach works for
you.

Is this a database you are maintaining, or is this the *only* time you will
ever need to use these addresses?

Usually, the most efficient general approach would be to keep all the
address information in some other program (say, Excel, or as contacts in
Entourage), and then as you need to do labels or form letters, etc, do a
Data Merge each time, in order to pull the addresses into Word. It would be
quite easy to add addresses in Excel and re-sort the data alphabetically.

You can also keep the address info in a Word data source (though those
things confuse me, personally).

What do you have the address information in now?

Did you do a mail merge to get the labels you have, or did you just use
Tools | Labels to create a sheet of labels and type/paste the addresses into
each cell individually?

What version of Word are you using?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Kim -

As right as Daiya is, trying to rearrange or modify an existing label doc is
more trouble than it's worth

What she is suggesting in the reference to Excel is *not* to create the
labels in an Excel file - Excel doesn't do that. The Excel file would be
used to store the name & address (record) information as a list or database.
That data could then be merged into labels using Word's Mail Merge Manager.

If you're not comfortable with Excel you can create the data source using
the Mail Merge Manager. It will help you create a document with the
appropriate fields of information in a table where the data records are
stored. The features of the Manager can also be used to revise the records &
there are tools for sorting & selecting records for any given merge.

You might have a look here for more info - it is based on PC Word but
directly correlates to the Mac 9click the 'Refresh' button once or twice if
the page doesn't load right off):

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/CreateADataSource.htm

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