Merging and editing datasource questions

[Toody]

I have questions pertaining to the editing and order/filtering of a
datasource. (I have Word 2003, but I am working with a Word 2000 datasource
file.)

1. I've tried the mail merge in Word 2003, and it seems that the only way to
edit text in a datasource is to go through the mail merge wizard, as opposed
to opening the datasource directly as in Word 2000. Is this true?

2. How do I edit, add or delete a field name in a datasource in 2003?

Lastly, I have a long list of addresses that I'm updating in a Word for a
friend. They are separated into different categories, such as "friends,"
"clients," and "family." (These labels/addresses go into one large address
book.) Would it be easier for me to create a datasource for each category,
which may result in unused/blank labels if some of the addresses don't fill
up a page. Or would it be better for me to put all the addresses in one
datasource and place their category in a field? If I perform the latter, can
I set options in the merge wizard to print out the entire list of addresses
alphabetically by category?

So that it will look something like this:

(Friends)
John Abel
Jerry Brown
Andy Collins

(Clients)
Sue Arnold
Tom Jones
Sarah Smith

The words in parenthesis will not be included.

Any help will be appreciated. I'm sorry if this is so long, but I am used to
Word 2000. I did look through the Microsoft site and message boards, but
couldn't find the answer to my questions.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

1. I've tried the mail merge in Word 2003, and it seems that the only way

to
edit text in a datasource is to go through the mail merge wizard, as
opposed
to opening the datasource directly as in Word 2000. Is this true?

If you created your datasource in Word 2000, then it's actually a Word .doc
file, probably with a single table where the first row contains the column
(or field) names.

If that's the case, you can open the .doc file in Word 2003 and edit it
directly. However, you may not see the changes reflected immediately when
previewing your Mail Merge Main Document - you might need to save the data
..doc, or save/close both, or possibly open the Word 2003 Edit Recipients
dialog box and click the Refresh button (i.e. I don't know in this case).
NB, when working in MailMerge with Word 2003 it's generally simplest to
enable the MailMerge toolbar and leave it there - most of the buttons and
functions you need are on it, and it's less awkward than the Mail Merge
Wizard. But it doesn't appear/disappear depending on whether the active
document is a mail merge main document or not, as in Word 2000.

2. How do I edit, add or delete a field name in a datasource in 2003?

If you want to add a field/column to a .doc table type data source, you can
add a column to that table, as long as you have not exceeded the maximum
number of columns in a Word table (63).

Lastly, I have a long list of addresses that I'm updating in a Word for a
friend. They are separated into different categories, such as "friends,"
"clients," and "family." (These labels/addresses go into one large address
book.) Would it be easier for me to create a datasource for each category,

Personally, I would probably keep them all in one data source and use the
filtering and sorting facilities in the Edit Recipients dialog box when I
needed to select a particular type or to seqeunce them by type (click the
downarrow on the heading of one of the columns in that dialog box to see how
to filter quickly, and click the Advanced... option in that dropdown to see
the old "Query options" dialog.)

However, that won't provide a facility to merge tham all with each category
starting on a new page of labels. To do that, it's probably simplest to do
as many merges as you have categories, as long as there are not too many and
you can remember what they all are

 

[Toody]

Thank you very much! I was getting a bit confused at why I couldn't perform
the same operations with a .doc datasource in Word 2000 as I could with a
datasource created in Word 2003. (Mail Merge Helper helps a lot!)