Is it too difficult? can I sort some of the fields within one record?

[Kath]

Every record has a list of schools and the attendance
duration. Is there a way to set it to sorting that group
of data at the same time the records are being merged to
the form letter?
I have in the data file information such as:
for student A, there are personal information and there
are the following:
Institution Name Beginning and End of Year-MM
(WA) Whatcom C C 0601 0802
(CA) USC 0900 0601
(WA) U W 0399 0600

and I need to sort the order of the three schools into the
following (see below) based on the ending year and month
with the most recent at the bottom. I can use the
download data if I can get the mail merge to sort that
info for me but right now I have to reenter the names of
schools and their attendance dates in the above mentioned
order as such.

(WA) U W 0399 0600
(CA) USC 0900 0601
(WA) Whatcom C C 0601 0802

Do I have any hope?

Background
-----------
I have a mail merge job that is repeatedly done on well
over 3 thousand entries every year.

I use Access to get the data and I export the data into
Excel, then open in and convert it into a word .sf file so
that I can add additional information to some fields that
don't exist in the database in Access.

Thank you ever so much!

Kath
..

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I don't know what a Word .sf file is, nor do I understand the need to use
Excel in the process.

I would be trying to do the whole thing in Access. If you need to do any
sorting, it is much easier with an Access query.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Kath]

Maybe I forgot the ending of the data/secondary file
created with MailMerge Help. Because I am trying to merge
the word document with the Access file - and many of my co-
workers are not given access to the Access data, so if I
can forward them the data extracted via email, it would
reduce the amount of typing we do for over 6000 applicants
ever year.

I tried to explain in my earlier posting (so sorry that I
jumped the gun and reposted as I waited a couple days and
didn't see any replies, so I thought I didn't phrase it
right)