Mail Merge from Excel

[pete5440]

When doing a mail merge and I go to Edit Recipient List, the columns that
appear are not in the same order as my Excel worksheet. On my excel worksheet
the first column is a “date†column (00/00/2009) but this appears on the far
right column of the recipient list. I can drag the date column to the left
but I am curious as to why it appears this way as I need this date column in
the first position to select my recipients. Second question on the recipient
list is is there a way to select (check) a group of recipients (rows) without
having to individually check each box? I tried CTRL Shift at each ‘end’ but
this doesn’t work. Finally, why, after I have selected my Address Block and
Updated my labels, is the first label on the sheet the last one from my list?
I must manually click back to the beginning of my recipient list to the first
label I want. I never recall having these issues with earlier versions of
Excel.

 

[macropod]

Hi Pete,

If you know the date range to be included in the mailmerge, you could use a SKIPIF field instead of having to filter the list via
Edit Recipient List. The SKIPIF field could be coded as:
{SKIPIF{=({MERGEFIELD DbDate \@ YYYYMMDD}< {FILLIN "First Date to include." \@ YYYYMMDD \o })+({ MERGEFIELD DbDate \@ YYYYMMDD}>
{FILLIN "Last Date to include." \@ YYYYMMDD \o})}= 1}
where DbDate is the name of your date field.

With this, you'll be prompted to supply the first and last dates to merge. Any records outside this date range will be excluded.

Note: The field brace pairs (ie '{ }') for the above example are created via Ctrl-F9 - you can't simply type them or copy & paste
them from this message.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

1. Re. the presentation sequence, Word loses any sequence you impose
when you close the document (or maybe Word). Word basically "recognises"
column names that look like address field names, and puts them in its
own preferred sequence. If you really need to maintain your own
sequence, you will need to change the names so that Word does not
"recognise" them and so that they will sort - e.g. use 01field1,
02field2 etc.

Alternatively, for Word XP/2003 (you don't actually say which version
you are using), someone posted an alternative that uses field mapping -
see the conversation at

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/mi...+recipients+columns+sequence#2950703842abea7c

As for the filtering, you can try clicking the dropdown in the top of
your date column and either select a single date from the list, or click
Advanced... (which you can click in any column), (or in Word 2007, click
the Filter... option in the dialog box) and specify your filter criteria
in there. Unfortunately, you may find that Word does not actually
perform the correct query as a result (it will not necessarily recognise
the date format you specify, but you can always try entering the date in
YYYY-MM-DD format or the U.S. format D/M/YYYY)

FWIW I do not believe that using { SKIPIF } fields to filter is an
option in label merges, unless you only have one label per page. That is
because SKIPIF does not simply skip a record - it cancels the merge for
the current "copy of the document", so if for example the merge process
has filled in 5 of the labels on a page, then the SKIPIF matches in the
next record, you will lose the SKIPIF's record (correctly), but merge
will also throw away those 5 labels and start with the next record after
the SKIPIF.

Finally, why, after I have selected my Address Block and
Updated my labels, is the first label on the sheet the last one from
my list?

Don't know without checking, but it is probably that if the last record
that you selected in Edit recipients is regarded as the "current" record
and is therefore displayed as the first in the page when you are previewing.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[pete5440]

Thanks for the input.