Merging multiple records into a list in one word document

[Thomas Jurdi]

The following is a small background so that you understand my problem:

I have an excel sheet that only contains headers. This excel sheet is used
to create a template word document with the mergefields found in the excel
sheet.
After creating the word document which now acts as a template.
When the user requests certain data for printing with the document template
created above, a copy of the excel sheet is created and is filled with the
appropriate data and if used as a datasource for the word document so that
now upon merging or preview I can see the correct data fill the mergefields.
This works perfectly when the data is unique and each record in the excel
sheet is has to be on a new page.

Problem:
However, my problem is when I want to create a list on one word document page.
I have 2 questions:
1. My data in the excel sheet is sorted by a key which displays data as a
master detail record view. How can I have this master detail view in the word
document? I have already tried the methods recommended by Graham Mayor in his
reply to a post some several days ago but that hasn't worked.
2. I want to print a list of all the records in my excel sheet on one word
document page. Considering that it fits on one page.

Thank you very much for some much needed help.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

1. My data in the excel sheet is sorted by a key which displays data
as a

master detail record view. How can I have this master detail view in the word
document? I have already tried the methods recommended by Graham Mayor in his
reply to a post some several days ago but that hasn't worked.

Does that include the approach written up by macropod, at
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showthreaded.pl?Number=731107

? I think that probably assumes that you want one master per page (or
section) but since the page breaks are inserted using a field, it can
easily do multiple master records per page (e.g. change the page break
to a couple of newlines)

If you want something that /looks/ more like an Excel sheet,
withtable/cell borders etc., that's more difficult because it's
difficult to mix table stuff and ordinary pargraphs in Word.You can use
a slightly different approach, e.g. using a mail merge query to get the
master documens, then filling in the details with a DATABASE field that
uses a WHERE clause to pick the detail records for the current master,
but frankly, it doesn't usually work all that well.

If you want something that /behaves/ like an Excel sheet - there's only
really one solution - use an Excel sheet! Although I suppose you can
embed it in Word, link to it from Word, or you could probaby use Word's
outlining feature and suitable paragraph styles to achieve something
similar.

It may be useful to know why you need something that is basically
spreadsheet-like to be presented as a Word document instead - if it is
to be printed, it's probably easier to do it from Excel. And so on...

The same is to a certain extent true of your point (2). There are
various ways you can list your data in Word - copy/paste, copy/paste
special (with various format options), merge using a single row table
that has one cell for each column in your data source, and so on. If you
have a very specific requirement that is not covered by those kind of
options it would be better if you could spell it out in more detail.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk