salutations

[Mindy]

Hi , I'm just starting to work with mass email and mail merge. I created the email in Word and the names and email addresses are in Excel. I imported the names just fine but the Greeting says Dear Ms. Jane Doe but I would rather it say Dear Ms. Doe. The Excel file has the first and last name in the same cell. Is there a way to have the mail merge ignore the first name? Mindy

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP - DELETE UPPERCASE CHARACT]

Copy the column of names from Excel into a Word document where it will
appear as a single column table. With the cursor in that table, select
Convert table to text from the Tables menu. Then from the Edit menu, select
Replace and in the Find what box, enter a space (spacebar) and in the
Replace with box, enter ^t. This will insert a tab in place of the spaces
between the first and last names. Now, select all of the names, and from
the Tables menu, select Convert text to table. You will then get a two
column table with the first names in column 1 and the last names in column
2. You can then select this table and copy it into Excel.

--
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

 

[J_Gold]

Hi Mindy,

While Doug's solution will work, you don't need to copy your data into Word to
do it. Excel has that feature built in. Just insert a new column to the right
of the column that contains both the first and last name. Highlight the column
that contains the names and then select "Data", "Text to Columns. This will
bring up the "Convert Text to Columns Wizard". Select "Delimited" as your file
type, press Next; select Tab and Space as your delimiters, press Finish. The
First and Last name will be separated. Name the columns appropriately and then
you will be able to select only the LastName for your salutation in Word.

Cheers,
Angela

Hi , I'm just starting to work with mass email and mail merge. I created the

email in Word and the names and email addresses are in Excel. I imported the
names just fine but the Greeting says Dear Ms. Jane Doe but I would rather it
say Dear Ms. Doe. The Excel file has the first and last name in the same cell.
Is there a way to have the mail merge ignore the first name? Mindy