Mail Merge / Address Book

[Roy A.]

Hello,

I have Word XP and Lotus Notes 6.0

I have given you the versions of the types of application
software I use on my computer.

I would like to create an Address book without using the
mail merge feature if at all possible.

Also, I notice in the Internet tools option, there are
several drop down boxes that will allow me to select Lotus
Notes (may I ask how is that used)

Thanks for your thought and directions

 

[Peter Jamieson]

There are potentially several different issues here.

For Word to be able to use an "Address book" in a merge or as the data
source for Labels/Envelopes, the Address book basically has to be a "MAPI
address book". Typically this means you can use an Outlook Address book but
not an Outlook Express Address book. In theory other address book providers
that are MAPI-compliant should be useable, but
a. many address books are not MAPI-complient
b. I have certainly found it difficult to discover which popular addesss
books can work with Word and which cannot

However, nothing prevents you from maintaining address data in another
format that has nothing to do with MAPI or an e-mail client, but which can
be used as the data source for a merge. For example you could keep address
data in an Excel spreadsheet, an Access database, or in a Word document
containing a table.

Also, I notice in the Internet tools option, there are
several drop down boxes that will allow me to select Lotus
Notes (may I ask how is that used)

These drop-downs allow you to select the program that should be used by
default to deal with a specific type of activity. For example, if you select
a program in the e-mail list, when you click on a mailto: link in a web
page, Internet Explorer should start the e-mail client you specified (or at
least open its message creation dialog box). In principle, all software on
your WIndows system should use that e-mail client by default to create and
send new messages. However, in practice that will only happen if that e-mail
client is capable of satisfying all the program's requirements, and that is
not always the case. For example, my e-mail client cannot respond to
requests to create new messages from Internet Explorer.

Although many users may use a single program to write e-mail addresses,
maintain their address book (and perhaps their calendar), these are
logically different functions which might be performed by different pieces
of software, which is why there are separate drop-downs for e-mail, calendar
and address book.

 

[Roy A.]

I am not exactly clear as to what you are talking about or
what you are suggesting. What I would like to do is create
an address book without using a mail merge. How do you as
advise. I can't use Outlook because that is not a program
that is support by the company that I work for.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I have Word XP and Lotus Notes 6.0

I have given you the versions of the types of
application software I use on my computer.

I would like to create an Address book without using the
mail merge feature if at all possible.

What kind of address book? I assume you have one in Lotus Notes already; you
may have others that you maintain one way or another in Word. e.g. are you
trying to
a. print a copy of the address book entries you have in Lotus Notes?
b. create a Word document containing the address book entries you have in
Lotus Notes?
c. something else?

If (a), I would have thought there were facilities within Notes to do that.
but I don't know Notes well enough to say.

If (c), please let us know what you are attempting. But obviously this group
is likely to be able to help more with Word mailmerge & fields than it can
with Notes.

If (b), problem one is to access the Notes address book data, and problem 2
is to create a Word document from it. If you select Notes as the e-mail
client and Address book client in IE (cf. the other part of your question
about the Internet tools option) you /may/ find that the Notes address book
becomes available to Word. So that might allow you to transfer addresses one
by one, by hand to a Word document. But I don't know of any way to get that
data into Word /en masse/ except using MailMerge, and in any case as far as
I know it is at best difficult to use Lotus address book data as a mail
merge data source.