Word field Skip IF problem

[Michelle Hanan]

I have a mergefield that uses word field "Skip if".
It basically says Skip record if "mergefield to" does not equal that
documents name. The problem is that I have a document that is considered
miscellaneous and is used for about 20 different records. Is there a way to
put in all of these names in the word field "skip if"? Or am I going to have
to make 20 different documents?
This is what it looks like with one record.
{ SKIP IF {MERGEFIELD To }<>"Department of Ecology"}
Any suggestions?? Thanks!

 

[Peter Jamieson]

On the face of it, you should be able to use one field after another, e.g.

{ SKIP IF {MERGEFIELD To }<>"Department of Ecology"
}{ SKIP IF {MERGEFIELD To }<>"Department B"
}

However, I am not completely sure what you are actually doing here: Surely
if you SKIP when the "To" is /not/ "Department of Ecology" then e.g. you
want to SKIP if it /is/ "Department B" - adding extra "not equal" conditions
does not seem to make sense.

If you could spell out what your merge is trying to achieve, maybe we could
suggest a different approach (and maybe not!)

Peter Jamieson

 

[Michelle Hanan]

Basically I have a worksheet that has different headings: "to" "planner"
"date completed" etc. These are also the mergefields in my word docs. So if
under the heading To the department is not Ecology then it skips it until it
finds the correct department name. Which is fine for all of the rest of my
documents except Miscellaneous.doc. This document is used for several
different departments. I'm not sure how I can put a mergefield in that has
more than one document name. . This way it pulls all of the names off the
worksheet and makes different documents for each one. I hope this makes more
sense. It's a lil hard to explain.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Hi Michelle,

Unfortunately, I suspect I'm not quite getting the picture of exactly what
you need.

You can certainly make a field that SKIPs with multiple criteria, it's more
a question of what those criteria need to be. however, I'm not sure you're
going to be able to get multiple documents out of it, at least not in a
single merge.

If you want to use the same document multipe times with different SKIPIF
criteria, you might be able for example to input the name of the department
you want to skip in an ASK field (say

{ ASK thingtoskip }

then use { SKIPIF { MERGEFIELD To } = { REF thingtoskip } }

(or whatever).

I wonder whether in some cases you would be better off using the Mail Merge
Recipients dialog box (Word 2002, 2003 - it's on one of the buttons on the
Mail merge toolbar which you can display using Tools|Customize) to select
the records you want to merge.

Anyway, I may not be able to reply again for a while so if you post again in
this thread and do not see a reply for a few days, I'd post again in a new
thread.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Graham Mayor]

So hard it has lost me too
I wouldn't use a series of SkipIfs using 'not equal to'. You could use the
converse if you wanted to produce documents for more than one department, by
entering
{SKIPIF {Mergefield To} = "Department A"}{SkipIF {Mergefield To} =
"Department C"} etc leaving all those that you want unskipped. (which is
essentially what Peter was suggesting ). But I don't understand your
Miscellaneous.document.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Michelle Hanan]

I know it's hard to explain. Let's see if I can clear it up a bit. My
worksheet has headings(which are my mergefields), and under the headings are
columns with department names such as Dept of Ecology, Dept of Fish &
Wildlife, etc. These department names have their own unique document they
are merged with through a macro. There are several Departments that are
"misc.", meaning they can all use the same document(the misc. document). So
I am trying to figure out a way to put all these document names(the
misc.ones) in that first mergefield that states, Skip if the mergefield "to"
does not equal that department name. I can't figure out how to put more than
one name in that mergefield. The mergefield works fine for all the other
documents that only contain that one name.
I hope this helps. Thanks!

 

[Graham Mayor]

If I understand your further comments, the simplest plan would be to add
another field to the worksheet ie MISC Y or N
{IF {Mergefield Misc \*upper} = "Y" "Use document Misc" "Else use dedicated
document"}

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Michelle Hanan]

Thanks for your help. I put a field in the worksheet like you suggested and
then put in a merge field that states if misc does not equal x, skip it. It
works like a charm!