Office for SOHO addresses?

[Norm]

Looking for information on easy to use address book software for home
and home office.

My wife and I have been using Filemaker Pro for this but mainly because
I had used Filemaker Pro for other work projects. That is no longer the
case so we are dropping Filemaker.

So now I'm looking for recommendations on a basic easy to use address
book that can be used for mailings (can mail to full list or select
certain subsets).

Is the address book in Office vX an option? Or any other suggestions.

Appreciate the help.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Norm,

The Office Address Book is maintained in Entourage. Check it out, see if you
like it. Here's more information than you probably wanted, gleaned from
various questions and answers on these groups.

For most custom uses--printing labels, printing condensed address books,
creating personally addressed form letters, etc--you have to use Word and do
a data merge using the Office Address Book as a source. This is probably
less complicated than it sounds, and then you have the full power of Word to
do formatting.

To print subsets of the addresses--in Word, on the Data Merge Manager, there
is a Query Options button at the bottom. This button allows you to select
either individual names or an entire category. (NOTE: I'm talking about
Word 2004, I'm not sure what was present in Word X). I suggest you throw a
few addresses into Entourage and do a test merge run in Word, checking the
Query Options and seeing if it will work for you.

Additional limitations people have run into--it always uses the default
addresses, Nickname is not a merge field.... Many of these could be worked
around by Exporting the address book to an tab-delimited/Excel file, and
using that as the data source--more fields are exported than are available
to merge in Word by default. Since the address book will only export all
entries, subsets there would require some manipulation in Excel. (One
woman, however, needed the "Children" information to organize a family
reunion, and had to go to a third-party script to get that, as it wasn't
exported by default. One woman who had been using Panorama database program
in OS 9 to maintain a membership database and wanted to merge addresses into
Zip Code order decided to just pay for the Panorama upgrade rather than mess
with Excel as an intermediate step. It's certainly not going to be *nearly*
as powerful as FileMaker, so it really depends on what you want to do, and
how often.)

Apple, of course, has an Address Book program, though I think the merge
capabilities are quite limited--last I checked, Pages wouldn't even merge
from it. Since I don't use it, I am really not sure what it offers
itself--but I would be very surprised if there weren't a plethora of
third-party options out there designed to let you do fancy things with your
Address Book data. That might be worth asking about on the Apple discussion
groups.

Hope that helps,

 

[Norm]

Hope that helps,

Very helpful. I appreciate.

 

[CyberTaz]

Another thought -

If you have Office X you already have another "basic easy to use address
book that can be used for mailings (can mail to full list or select certain
subsets)" - it's called Excel. You can most likely export your FileMaker
data as an Excel file & continue to work from that.

The list of data can be Sorted & Filtered using Excel's tools from the Data
menu & there is also a Data>Form that can be used for easily entering new
records as well as in numerous other ways. Best of all the Excel file
integrates seamlessly with Word for merges.

 

[Norm]

Another thought -

If you have Office X you already have another "basic easy to use address
book that can be used for mailings (can mail to full list or select certain
subsets)" - it's called Excel. You can most likely export your FileMaker
data as an Excel file & continue to work from that.

The list of data can be Sorted & Filtered using Excel's tools from the Data
menu & there is also a Data>Form that can be used for easily entering new
records as well as in numerous other ways. Best of all the Excel file
integrates seamlessly with Word for merges.

Interesting thought. I'll check.

I'm back on FMP v5 (run it in Classic) since have not been using very
much since moved to OS X. I'm not sure of its exporting options.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Another thought -

If you have Office X you already have another "basic easy to use address
book that can be used for mailings (can mail to full list or select certain
subsets)" - it's called Excel.

<snip>

Indeed. If these are business contacts, and you might someday want to chart
any custom information, Excel is likely a much better way to go.

Daiya

 

[CyberTaz]

Should be no problem - IIRC, FMP 5 creates a direct export as Excel (version
doesn't matter), and XL X can use it.

 

[Norm]

Another thought -

If you have Office X you already have another "basic easy to use address
book that can be used for mailings (can mail to full list or select certain
subsets)" - it's called Excel. You can most likely export your FileMaker
data as an Excel file & continue to work from that.

The list of data can be Sorted & Filtered using Excel's tools from the Data
menu & there is also a Data>Form that can be used for easily entering new
records as well as in numerous other ways. Best of all the Excel file
integrates seamlessly with Word for merges.

Thanks to all who have responded.

A question....

As I test using Excel for this (versus Address Book and Office Address
Book), I'm trying to figure out how I do a filter of the Excel addresses
and then print labels of just that filtered list. For instance only
those in a certain zip code.

Having not used Excel very much at all I guess I'm doing something (s)
wrong.

I used the AutoFilter and got a subset, I saved it to new Excel file and
then opened Word for a merge print. But it prints labels for the whole
list not just those filtered.

A very beginner error I'm sure.

Thanks for any tips.

BTW, I'm using Office v.X

 

[CyberTaz]

There's no need to do this in Excel... It's much more convenient to do the
filtering & sorting from Word.

When you do the merge in Word there is a Query Options button in the Merge
segment of the Data Merge Manager palette. That provides you with the tools
for setting criteria & sorting the records to be merged. You can use
different parameters each time you do a merge from the Excel file. For more,
see Word Help on keywords Data Merge Manager - specifically the topics on
Sorting and Selecting records (wording may be a little different in v.X,
but I don't think so).

The AutoFilter just collapses the list of records based on your criteria. As
you discovered it still outputs the entire list of records regardless of
what file format you output to. It works fine for data management within the
Excel file & printing from Excel prints only the displayed records, etc. To
output selected records *only* you'd have to use the Advance Filter to copy
to another location, then use that as the record source - as well as other
options, all of which are just as inconvenient & time-consuming.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Norm]

There's no need to do this in Excel... It's much more convenient to do the
filtering & sorting from Word.

Thanks for those tips. Appreciate.

Looking at it I'm not quite sure how I limit the merge to just certain
zip codes but I'll go to the Word Help for instructions.

Thanks again.

 

[Phillip Jones]

another point.

You can use the address book created in Excel to build for letters. Then
use data merge and use the excel file as the data merge file.

And both Excel and Word have template files for standard address labels.

Pardon if I have rehashed some previous information. :-(

Thanks to all who have responded.

A question....

As I test using Excel for this (versus Address Book and Office Address
Book), I'm trying to figure out how I do a filter of the Excel addresses
and then print labels of just that filtered list. For instance only
those in a certain zip code.

Having not used Excel very much at all I guess I'm doing something (s)
wrong.

I used the AutoFilter and got a subset, I saved it to new Excel file and
then opened Word for a merge print. But it prints labels for the whole
list not just those filtered.

A very beginner error I'm sure.

Thanks for any tips.

BTW, I'm using Office v.X

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Phillip Jones]

Supposed to be "Form Letters" not "for letters". Sorry!

another point.

You can use the address book created in Excel to build for letters. Then
use data merge and use the excel file as the data merge file.

And both Excel and Word have template files for standard address labels.

Pardon if I have rehashed some previous information. :-(

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Norm]

There's no need to do this in Excel... It's much more convenient to do the
filtering & sorting from Word.

OP back.

Well..... I won't admit how long I spent trying to figure out Query
filters (and having Word freeze half the time when using two filters and
the other times just not work) but let's just say the time spent can be
measured in hours not minutes.

At any rate if my wife goes from using Filemaker Pro to Excel and tries
to use an Excel file and then Data Merge in Word with Query filters,
I'll see her Mac fly out her office window.

So, backing the truck up, can one just take an Excel file, do a Save As,
delete manually records one doesn't want to use for labels and proceed
to merge in Word? Kinda inefficient but I guess simple.

Also, for you and others reading this, are there "power" users who use
Apple's Address Book for some purposes, Office's Address Book for others
and an Excel file for other address projects? I'm curious if most of
those of you in the know just use one of the above or more than one
given the specific circumstances.

Thanks for the education on all of this. I appreciate.

 

[Norm]

There must be a problem of some sort (probably with the setup of the source
file) - that is causing the behavior you describe. You might take a look at:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/word2004/using.aspx?pid=usingword2004&
type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_articles/officex/wd_catalog.xml

If you'd rather not pursue it from that direction, however, you can try this
instead...

Since you seem to be familiar with the AutoFilter, use it in Excel to reduce
the list to the desired record set. Then select & copy the filtered records
including the field names. Paste to a different blank worksheet & do the
merge using those records (that sheet) as your source. When the merge is
completed you can just delete the sheet the records were copied to or just
the duplicate records.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

Thanks for the additional help.

Given time invested at this point I think I'll follow your second
suggestion and not try any further on the Query function in the Data
Merge Manager.

Appreciate all the tips.

 

[Phillip Jones]

Yes! Provided you know what record you want to delete.

You can also sort by say "last name or zip code to show all records in
numeric or alphabetic order.

OP back.

Well..... I won't admit how long I spent trying to figure out Query
filters (and having Word freeze half the time when using two filters and
the other times just not work) but let's just say the time spent can be
measured in hours not minutes.

At any rate if my wife goes from using Filemaker Pro to Excel and tries
to use an Excel file and then Data Merge in Word with Query filters,
I'll see her Mac fly out her office window.

So, backing the truck up, can one just take an Excel file, do a Save As,
delete manually records one doesn't want to use for labels and proceed
to merge in Word? Kinda inefficient but I guess simple.

Also, for you and others reading this, are there "power" users who use
Apple's Address Book for some purposes, Office's Address Book for others
and an Excel file for other address projects? I'm curious if most of
those of you in the know just use one of the above or more than one
given the specific circumstances.

Thanks for the education on all of this. I appreciate.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>