Is there VB or Field Code to change the order of merged fields?

[CJ_Printer]

I work in a hospital in house print shop. We have been doing merges fo
years using Word with Excel for the data source.

On orders that will be produced more than one to a sheet (ie. 4 sheet
4.25 X 5.5 on 1 sheet 8.5 X 11) we have historically produced an Exce
file containing a set of columns for each set of merged data on pe
card. We have done this so each stack after cutting will be in th
correct sequence. (First merged sheet through last merged sheet in on
stack, picking up with the top of the next stack, etc...)

This brings me to our question. Is there a more elegant way, either i
Word or Excel, to accomplish this without having to split the dat
source into sets of columns for each set of merged data?

It's really not that big of a deal with small data sources, but whe
you get into tens of thousands of names it gets complicated FAST.
Imagine 90000+ names divided into 16 sets of columns. Each se
containing a prefix, first name, middle name, last name, suffix
credentials, address, city, state, and zip. Then throw in the fac
that about half of the prefix, middle name, suffix, and credentia
fields are blank, and you start getting into some pretty difficul
coding.

We're fairly comfortable with our current process, however it's awfull
time intensive.

We are just trying to figure out if we are missing some field code o
VB script that could make our lives easier. Any help would be GREATL
appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I am not sure that I really understand what you are saying.

Are you saying that to produce four cards to a sheet, you have the data for
each of the four cards in the one record, and that you are using a
formletter type mailmerge main document without using any <<Next Record>>
fields?

That is your fields in the mail merge data source are set up as follows

Field1Card1
Field2Card1
...
FieldnCard1
Field1Card2
Field2Card2
...
FieldnCard2
Field1Card3
Field2Card3
...
FieldnCard3

Field1Card4
Field2Card4
...
FieldnCard4

across the sheet of course (they are transposed above as otherwise the line
breaks might jumble it all up)

If that is not what you are saying, can you elaborate a bit more.
--
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