mail merge -vertical orientation of data

[geminidreamer]

In Word 2003 (Windows XP Pro OS) I was attempting to use mail merge for some
labels I am creating. When I did the Insert>Field, in the next dialog box I
selected Category > Mail Merge, then below that Field Names > MergeField
where I gave the field the header name which matched my data source (e.g.
first name) in the section titled Field Properties. Just to the right of
that in the area named Field Options, I ticked off the box for Vertical
Formatting. I have a small section of my labels where I want the name to
appear vertically. However when I complete the merge process, the name does
not go vertically but simply appears with double spaced characters
horizontally. can anyone help me get the fields selected to go vertically?
What am I doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Renee

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Never having inserted a mergefield in that way before, I had never seen that
option. Having now done so, I can confirm that it does not work as expected
as I get the same results.

As far as I know, the only way to arrange text vertically is to have it in
the cell of a table and right click on the cell and from the shortcut menu,
choose Text Direction.

It is going to take some fiddling to prevent do that from screwing up the
layout of the labels. Note, that in Word, labels are just tables with fixed
cell dimensions so that if you split the cell that is a label so that you
can arrange the text in one part (cell) of the label so that it is vertical,
then you use the Update or Propagate Label facility to update all the labels
on the sheet, it will

1. NOT propagate the splitting of the cells to the other labels. You
will have to do that manually

2 Insert the <<Next Record>> field into the both of the second of the
cells created by the Split and you will have to manually remove that field
to keep all of the data for a record on the one label.

--
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

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Looking now at the Field Specific Switches tab of the Field Options dialog
for the Mergefield field, I see that the purpose of the \v switch that is
added by selecting the Vertical Format as you have do is to "Request
character conversion for vertical formatting" which I guess means
increasing the spacing of the characters.

In my tests, not making that conversion gives a far better result.

--
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

 

[Peter Jamieson]

As far as I know the \v switch is intended for East Asian language documents
where the characters are laid out vertically. In that case text in latin
character sets can be displayed in two formats. It can either be written so
the characters are in their "normal" orientation , but one character below
the next, e.g.

l
i
k
e

t
h
i
s

or the entire text can in effect be rotated through 90 degrees, so that (if
you like) you would have to turn your head sideways to read the text.

because different characters are used depending on which way you do it, /v
is used to "convert" the characters for the first layout, and no /v does the
second layout.

So using \v you would only get the vertical layout you want if you selected
Page Setup->Document Grid->Text direction->Vertical and
(a) you may only get to see that option if you have an East Asian language
enabled in Office (or in Vista, in Control Panel-Regional settings) and
(b) this sets up the entire page for vertical text.

Other than that, I don't know of a better way to do what you want than the
one Doug describes.

Peter Jamieson