Is There a Better Way to Create a List Sorted by Category?

[TC]

I don't usually work with Microsoft Word, but over the past few months
I've been supporting a user community that does a lot of mail merges,
and I've noticed a pattern: On four occasions, I've been asked to help
with mail merges, and on all four occasions the merge has been what
Microsoft refers to as a "List Sorted by Category". These are mail
merges in which the data exists in a two-level hierarchy. (See <http://
support.microsoft.com/kb/294686>.)

Word was clearly not designed to handle this type of mail merge, and
the solution suggested in the knowledgebase is a bad solution. I can't
train users to implement that solution, and I find it very difficult
to support mail merges which implement that solution. Therefore, I'm
looking for a better solution.

Does anyone know of:
1) a third-party tool which works with Microsoft Word to produce this
type of merge;
2) a different word processor which handles this type of merge better
than Word; or
3) a database reporting tool which can produce a formatted document
and export it to Word?

(Note that Microsoft Access comes close to satisfying No. 3, since
its reporting feature can process multiple levels of hierarchy,
produce a document, and export it to Word; but the export fails when
any substantial formatting is applied to the document.)


-TC

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

You are right that Word does not have the capability out of the box to
perform that sort of merge. On the few occasions where I have had to create
that sort of output, I have done in entirely with Access (including the
printing), but setting up an Access report to resemble a formatted Word
document is not something that is easily done by someone with limited
experience. Similarly the method in the KB article to which you make
reference. The article at
http://cornell.veplan.net/article.aspx?&a=3815 is quite good in that it
gives an explanation of the purpose of each part of the construction, and
the most common problem that occurs with people who have tried that and
can't get it to work is that they fail to start off with a catalog or
directory type merge. Another drawback with both of those methods is that
you cannot make use of a field from the first record in the group after the
list part of the document.

It is of course possible to construct a "roll-your-own" equivalent to mail
merge using vba with a template containing docvariable fields in place of
merge fields and creating a new document from that template for the first
record in each group as the code iterates through the datasource, adding
rows to a table that is set up in the template to contain the data from the
fields for the subsequent members of the group. Setting that up is not
something that the inexperienced user can do without first coming to grips
with vba. Depending upon how many variations of the theme you need to deal
with, it could be a possibility.

The other day, someone posted a link to
http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/mail_merge/ that apparently has the ability
to add attachments to a mail merge that is executed to email (as an
alternative to an add-in that I had created), and I am not sure what other
capabilities it has, or if it would be suitable for your purpose.


--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

You might also take a look at the tutorial that fellow MVP, Macropod has
just posted at
http://www.wopr.com:80/cgi-bin/w3t/showthreaded.pl?Number=731107

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP