The Ultimate Q: How do you flip rows and columns for headers?

[FRUSTRATED]

This is based on Word & Excel 2003 on XP,

THE OBVIOUS:
When someone uses Excel2003 to create a database for Word2003: Mail Merge
the FIRST row is where all the headers go: Last Name, First Name, SSN, DOB,
etc, etc, etc ...and I understand that logically it all makes sense to have
the data entered in "rows" in order for Mail Merge to identify the data with
the "header row"


THE QUESTION:
I need to accomplish the OPPOSITE of that. Need the Mail Merger to
recognize the
"first column" to be the "header column"(ie. A1 to A100) and the second
column (B1 to B100) to be where the data will be entered...


THE REASON:
I recieve all my data in excel, in columns (that's the paramaters I MUST
deal with). Would love to link the second column to word - mail merger to
auto fill for me 30+ documents for signing... per person who sends the excel
sheets!
Rather than sit there all day and manually re-type everything into columns,
need to figure out how to "reverse engineer" this to work for my situation...

HELP! - so far all my searching has come up empty!


ADK

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You may be able to use the TRANSFORM function in Excel to swap the entire
worksheet around.

I'm not particularly familiar with Excel, and this is one of those things
that it's easy to get wrong at first, but
a. you can try the following
b. you can ask in an Excel group

1. Make sure you make a copy of your workbook.

2. Open the copy. Let's assume your data is in "Sheet1" and has 5 rows and 4
columns

3. Cretae a new sheet, or open an existing blank sheet (typically Sheet2 or
Sheet3)

4. In the new sheet, select rows and columns for the destination table (i.e.
5 columns and 4 rows, i.e. A1 to E4)

5. Click in the formula bar or press F2, then enter

=TRANSPOSE(

then either
a. go and select your table in Sheet1. Excel will enter Sheet1!A14 for
you, or
b. enter Sheet1!A14 manually
c. type the closing )
d. press control-shift-enter (i.e. do not just press enter as you normally
would at the end of a formula)

Excel should transpose all the data.

If necessary (e.g. if you are going to connect from Word using DDE), make
sure the resulting sheet is the only one in the workbook (that's why you
need a copy).

You may also need to reformat the columns and do other stuff to solve the
problems people generally have with amounts, dates and postal/ZIP codes in
Excel sheets - Graham Mayor's pages at http://www.gmayor.com are a good
source of info. for most of the problems you'll encounter, and/or search the
mailmerge/fields group at http://groups.google.com

Peter Jamieson

and note
a. the name of the sheet (typically "Sheet1"
b. the cell address of the bottom right cell in your table - e.g. if you
have a small table with 5 rows and 4 columns, it would be D5

3. Create a blank worksheet if there are none already, and select cell A1

4. Click in the formula bar (or press F2) and enter =TRANSPOSE(Sheet1!A15)
then press enter

5. You may see probably see an error marker against the result

6. In your new sheet, select the number of columns and rows the tranposed
table will occupy (in this case you need to select A1 to E5)

7. Click in the formula bar, or press F2. The fomula you entered previously
should be present

=TRANSPOSE

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

In Excel, select the data, then copy it to the clipboard and then use
Edit>Paste Special and check the Transpose box.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[FRUSTRATED]

I LOVE YOU GUYS.

Although BOTH answers were great, neither were the venues I went for...
instead, the keyword used "transpose" allowed me to search and figure out a
better way.

For future reference, use this:
1. after you get a data work sheet that has fields on the first column and
"answers" on the second column...
2. copy and paste both columns into a separate "Sheet" ie..."Sheet 2"
3. PASTE SPECIAL and just check the box that says "transpose" and it will
conver it from column to rows...

That's all I need in order to get my work done now... THANKS GUYS YOU ARE
THE BEST!


ADK

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Thanks for the compliments, but I believe the way you describe doing it is
exactly what I suggested.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP