We used WordStar extensively for merging from the early 1980s until sometime
in the 1990s. In fact, we used its merge facilities to print almost
everything we produced. But the way Word goes about things is rather
different and it can be irritating for people from a WS or WP background.
All I can suggest is that you step through some suggestions and see if any
of them works for you.
In essence, Word wants you to start with a particular document layout, and
to produce copies of that layout for each entry in your "data source".
Although you can "INCLUDE" different texts depending on the values in your
data source, these texts are included into an existing format and layout. If
all your letters (or whatever they are) have identical physical layout,
header and footer margins, and probably identicla headers and footers, you
may be able to use that approach in Word. For example, you might try putting
the following fields in your Mail Merge Main Document:
{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD F32 }" = "Individual Gifts"
"{ INCLUDETEXT "the full pathname of your thksep07.doc file with backslashes
doubled up" }" ""
}{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD F32 }" = "VBS"
"{ INCLUDETEXT "the full pathname of your thksep07.doc file with backslashes
doubled up" }" ""
}{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD F32 }" = "Birdies for Charity"
"{ INCLUDETEXT "the full pathname of your birdies06.doc file with
backslashes doubled up" }" ""
}
and so on, where all the {} are the special field code characters you can
insert using ctrl-F9. I would suggest that you output to a new document,
then select the entire output document, and press F9 to update all those
INCLUDETEXT fields, then
a. see if the output is anything like the output you need
b. print some of the pages and see if that's still what you need.
A potential alternative to this "nested IF" approach is to create files with
names that are related directly to the names in your data source. Then you
can try "inverting" the above approach using e.g.
{ INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myinclude\\{ MERGEFIELD F32 }.doc" }
so you would need a file called "Individual Gifts.doc, a file called
VBS.doc, and so on, in the folder "c:\myincludes"
Otherwise, if your ".fi" files are much more variable (different layouts,
different headings etc.) then you may need to take a different approach. But
maybe you could have a look at the above first.
