I am trying to perform a mail merge that will result in several
thousand salary agreements. Each salary agreement will have a person's
name, job and salary. The problem is that most people have several jobs
hence they occupy several rows in the list. When I perform the mail
merge people with more than one job appear os a separate letter. I am
having difficulty figuring out how to combine each person's job onto
one letter.

This is what my list looks like

Name...............Job..................Salary
John Doe..........Teacher..........39,000
John Doe..........Coach...............2,000
Mary Smith.......Teacher............40,000
Mary Smith........Club Advisor......1,000

When I perform a typical mail merge separate letters are generated for
each job because the mail merge sees each row as a separate record. I
need to find a strategy to create one letter for each name with each
job listed.

Is there a mail-merge trick I can use to combine the jobs into a single

letter?

Word merge does not readily lend itself to this sort of task, but for an
example of how it may be done, see :

How to use mail merge to create a list sorted by category in Word 2002 -
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=294686

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Kurch wrote:
I am trying to perform a mail merge that will result in several
thousand salary agreements. Each salary agreement will have a person's
name, job and salary. The problem is that most people have several
jobs hence they occupy several rows in the list. When I perform the
mail merge people with more than one job appear os a separate
letter. I am having difficulty figuring out how to combine each
person's job onto one letter.

This is what my list looks like

Name...............Job..................Salary
John Doe..........Teacher..........39,000
John Doe..........Coach...............2,000
Mary Smith.......Teacher............40,000
Mary Smith........Club Advisor......1,000

When I perform a typical mail merge separate letters are generated for
each job because the mail merge sees each row as a separate record. I
need to find a strategy to create one letter for each name with each
job listed.

Is there a mail-merge trick I can use to combine the jobs into a
single

letter?

You are trying to perform a "multiple items per condition (=key field)"
mailmerge which Word does not really have the ability to do:

See the "Group Multiple items for a single condition" item on fellow MVP
Cindy Meister's website at

http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindy...faq1.htm#DBPic


Or take a look at the following Knowledge Base Article

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;211303

or at

http://www.knowhow.com/Guides/Compou...poundMerge.htm

--
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

"Kurch" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am trying to perform a mail merge that will result in several
thousand salary agreements. Each salary agreement will have a person's
name, job and salary. The problem is that most people have several jobs
hence they occupy several rows in the list. When I perform the mail
merge people with more than one job appear os a separate letter. I am
having difficulty figuring out how to combine each person's job onto
one letter.

This is what my list looks like

Name...............Job..................Salary
John Doe..........Teacher..........39,000
John Doe..........Coach...............2,000
Mary Smith.......Teacher............40,000
Mary Smith........Club Advisor......1,000

When I perform a typical mail merge separate letters are generated for
each job because the mail merge sees each row as a separate record. I
need to find a strategy to create one letter for each name with each
job listed.

Is there a mail-merge trick I can use to combine the jobs into a single

letter?

I am appreciative for the solutions listed. Howeverr, they may be
beyond my skill set.

If I added an employee ID field that listed the employee's first
occurence as 1 and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, occurence as X. Would that help?
Of course the 2nd employee's ID would be 2 and their subsequent rows
would also be X.

Would this make it any simpler?

Thanks.

No. There is no simple way when using Word.

It is however quite simple in Access if you are au-fait with report design.

--
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

"Kurch" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am appreciative for the solutions listed. Howeverr, they may be
beyond my skill set.

If I added an employee ID field that listed the employee's first
occurence as 1 and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, occurence as X. Would that help?
Of course the 2nd employee's ID would be 2 and their subsequent rows
would also be X.

Would this make it any simpler?

Thanks.

Where is the mail merge data coming from?

The mail merge data is coming from an Excel file.