Next Record If Question (Word 2003)

[Mark Watlock]

It is my understanding that inserting the Next Record If statement in a mail
merge would allow me to only merge records that meet the criteia I set . I
do not seem to be able to make this work. (Next Record If = Chicago should
only return records with Chicago in the city field)

I can use the Skip Record If command to restrict merged records to whatever
criteria I choose. I am using the Insert Word Field command from the Mail
Merge toolbar. I understand that I could filter the data source but I would
like to make this work.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Peter Jamieson]

(Next Record If = Chicago should

only return records with Chicago in the city field)

Not really. What <<Next record if>> does is move to the next record if the
current record meets the criteria. However, it does not then /re-evaluate/
the condition - Word evaluates each field in the Mail Merge Main Document
sequentially (and does whatever it does in nested fields) - it never loops.

So if you have your <<Next record if>> at the beginning of your mail merge
main document and you have records like

1. Los Angeles
2. Chicago
3. New York
4. Chicago
5. Chicago
6. Houston
7. Chicago
8. Chicago
9. Chicago
10. Chicago
11. Las Vegas
..
Word should produce output for

1,3,5,6,8,10,11 (I think!) which contains some Chicagos.

When encounters a Skip Record If and the criteria are met, the difference is
that it cancels processing of the current copy of the mail merge main
document. So in the simple case where you have a skip record if Chicago at
the beginning and no <<next record>> fields it does behave as if you had
excluded all the Chicago records from the data source. However, if for
example you have a label merge with a Skip record if Chicago in each label,
then Word will cancel the current page of labels (including non-Chicago
records) as soon as it encounters a Chicago record. If you have 21 labels
per sheet and Chicago appears somewhere in every 21 records then you get no
output.

It is easy to get the impression from Word Help over the years that
Microsoft "deprecated" { SKIPIF } a long time ago as it recommends that you
use the filtering options. But of in fact none of these approaches does
eaxctly the same thing. Personally I think there is at least one field
missing - what is needed is something like a { NEXT UNTIL } or some such.
But I think Microsoft's view has probably long been "anything more
complicated than the simplest mailmerges is something you ought to get
programmed using VBA or .NET"

Peter Jamieson