specific number of copies in mail merge

[dtripp]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I have an xls file with the data for my mail merge. The merge works fine, but I need to print a specific number of each row in the xls file, based off a field in that row. Is it possible to do this?

Example:

ROW | NAME | QUANTITY |
1 | John Smith | 200
2 | Robert Thompson | 300

I want to be able to print 200 copies of the data from Row 1, which would be <<NAME>>, and 300 copies of Row 2, which would also be <<NAME>>.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It's not straightforward.

The simplest approach is probably to create a new Excel sheet (or book)
where each row is expanded into the number of rows you need. It's possible
that you can do that using Excel worksheet functions (I'd ask in a Mac Excel
group).

Otherwise you would have to turn to something like Applescript.

If you need to turn to Applescript, then another approach for certain types
of merge would be to perform one merge for each row you require, i.e.
for each row in Excel
for i = 1 to quantity
set up mailmerge to merge that 1 row, and execute the merge
next
next

If that is feasible, it would in any case only really work for merges that
produce one separate thing for each record in the data source (e.g. letters,
probably emails, but not labels where there are multiple labels per page,
directory/catalog merges etc. I wouldn't really want to go this way though.

FWIW in the Windows version of Office I'd probably use SQL or VBA to
generate the correct number of rows for each label, then use that as the
data source.