Mail Merge Outcome Validation

[Mushinma]

I mail-merged 10 records of source data from MS Excel 2003 into an one page
MS Word 2003 template. The mail merge completed sucessfully with a 10-page
outcome Word file containing all records from the merge.

My question is: is there a way I can compare the merged data in the final
Word document with the original Excel data? In other words, if I have
firstName: A, B, C in the source Excel file, I want to know whether after the
mail merge value A, B, C is in the merged document with the exact value and
order as original.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Most people have better things to do. The only way to do it would be to
physically compare the data in Excel source with that in the document.

--
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

 

[Mushinma]

The reason for this exercise is to fulfill some audit control purposes. The
current process in place is Person A performs the mail merge and then Person
B spot checks the mail merge result with original Excel data source. However,
a lot of time, the data to be merged could be large (up to 1000 separate
records), which makes the spot check really time consuming and cumbersome.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I do not think that there is any other way of achieving the result. Have
you ever found a discrepancy between the merged output and the data in
Excel?

--
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

 

[Mushinma]

Thanks for getting back to me. I have not found any discrepancy between the
mail merge result and source data. However, there might be opportunities for
human manipulation after the mail merge. for instance, change Number A to
Number B in Word doc We are trying to do a final comparison before the mail
merge document become effective to catch the manipulation that has been done
to it to eliminate any error.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Execute the merge directly to a printer and then the user will not have the
opportunity to change anything, or use the addin that you can down load from
http://www.gmayor.com/individual_merge_letters.htm and execute the merge to
separate .pdf files rather that Word documents.

But, if a user is likely to change the result of a merge, aren't they as
likely to change the data source?

--
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