Mailing labels

[George Aster]

For years I used address data in a Word table to create
mailing labels with Windows95 and Windows98. It was easy
and worked beautifully. Now, since upgrading to Windows
XP, I find this no longer works. Instead I'm directed to
a Mail Merge Wizard, which refuses to recognize my
existing table as a valid data source and apparently
requires that I retype all the data to create a new
Address List to be saved in a My Data Sources folder.
Microsoft seemingly has a compulsion to fix things that
aren't broken. Is there no way to avoid retyping all my
address data?

George Aster

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Hi George,

If you open the View menu and select Toolbars and click on the Mailmerge
toolbar, you will get a toolbar with all the buttons you need without having
to use the mailmerge wizard.

You might also be interested in the article of "Getting back older
interfaces" in the Mailmerge in Word 2002 section of fellow MVP, Cindy
Meister's website at
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MergFram.htm

Also see Graham Mayor's site at http://www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com/

Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[George Aster]

With Doug Robbins excellent help, I have now learned that
a Word table can still be used as a data source in Word
2002 just as it was in Word 98. The Word document
containing the table must not have anything else in it
and the column headings must not contain any spaces.
Mailing labels can then be generated either with the help
of the Mail Merge Wizard or directly by use of the Mail
Merge toolbar. Thanks, Doug.

George Aster