WORD mail merge: Insert column heading when table field changes?

[RRCJOHN]

I am trying to make a directory much like a dictionary would be set up. When
the first letter of the word changes I want to put a heading in the column of
words with just the first letter of the words after that. I am importing
from Excel all the cells I would need including a field with just the first
letter.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

You can probably do it with a technique similar to that in the article at:

http://cornell.veplan.net/article.aspx?&a=3815

However, with a maximum of 26 letters to deal with, it is probably easier to
just insert records into the data source before each change in the first
letter, and insert the letter into the appropriate field in that record.


--
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

 

[macropod]

Hi RRCJOHN,

See also my tutorial on Catalogue/Directory Mailmerges at:
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showthreaded.pl?Number=731107

For your purposes, I'd be inclined to add a dummy data column to the Excel workbook that extracts just the first letter from the
relevant data field and use the the dummy data for the 'key'.

FWIW, if the data you want to test are in B2:B100, your dummy 'key' column could use the formula =LEFT(B2,1) on row 2 and copied
down to row 100 to extract the first letter for each record.