Mail merge filter

[Dee]

Hi, I've been asked to print labels for 12,000 addresses from a database of
approx 20,000. They do not have a commmon field e.g. same postcode etc. The
details are actually on 2 disks and have been compiled using Oracle (?). I'm
afraid my knowledge is very basic & I've never even heard of Oracle! I am
assuming I will have to import them into Word, and I wondered if anyone knew
how I could do this and also filter them please?

Thanks, Dee

 

[Peter Jamieson]

"Oracle" is /probably/ the client-server database management product - it's
widely used and is a similar kind of thing to Microsoft's SQL Server
product, if that means anything more to you

It may or may not be relevant what software your data was created in,
depending on what format it is in now. I would have a look at what is on the
disks (are they diskettes, CDs or what?). What are the file names and
extensions? How big are the files? Can you open the files and read the
contents in Notepad? Does at least one of the files have a header row that
provides field names for each field (column) in the file? Is there one field
for each part of the address (e.g. street, city etc.) or is the complete
address in a single field? What happens if you simply copy the files onto
your hard disk and select one of them as the data source for a merge?

As for filtering, you can do simple filtering in Word mailmerge (in Word
2002/2003 you can do it by opening the "Edit Recipients" box, clicking on
the column label of the field you want to filter and either selecting one of
the values or choosing the Advanced... option, which leads to another
dialog. In Word 2000 and earlier, you can reach that dialog via one of the
buttons in the Mail Merge Helper.

However, if you happen to have a database program such as Access, you may
find it easier to import the address data into that, and use its facilities
to filter the data.

Peter Jamieson