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#1
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How do I consolidate multiple mail merge data files into one file
I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into
one master file. Is this possible? |
#2
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You should be able to copy/paste...
******************* ~Anne Troy www.OfficeArticles.com www.MyExpertsOnline.com "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
#3
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What format are the data files? Comma delimited? Word documents? The kind of
Office Address List that Word creates as standard in Word 2002/2003, with a ..mdb extension? Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
#4
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Hi Peter,
Thank you for your message. One file is a Word Document ".doc" and the others are MDB files. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: What format are the data files? Comma delimited? Word documents? The kind of Office Address List that Word creates as standard in Word 2002/2003, with a ..mdb extension? Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
#5
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Hi Anne,
Thank you for the message. I can copy/paste the data file that is a Word Document. The other data files are "MDB" files and I don't think I can copy/paste those. Can I? Thank you, Robert Rodee "Anne Troy" wrote: You should be able to copy/paste... ******************* ~Anne Troy www.OfficeArticles.com www.MyExpertsOnline.com "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
#6
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Well, the answer partly depends on what format you want to use in future. A
table in Word is the simplest in some respects - e.g. since you already have Word, you definitely have the tool you need to maintain the list, but Word data sources can be difficult to edit directly if there are a lot of columns, and some versions of Word load Word data sources comparatively slowly. If you have got used to using the Office Address List (OAL) format (.mdb) format in Word 2002/2003, that may be a better long-term approach, but you will need Access to apply the general approach I suggest below. The following assume you are using Word 2002/2003. One way to merge all your data sources into a single Word data source is: a. Decide what columns you need. If there are over (about) 63, you will not be able to use a table in a Word document. You could create a tab-delimited source, but you may have difficulty dealing with any multiline fields such as address blocks. b. Create a catalog (directory) merge in Word with a single table row containing the number of columns you need, (or a single paragraph containing the number of tab-delimited columns you need). c. insert the appropriate merge fields from your data source into each the relevant table cells in the usual way, perform a merge to an output document, and save the document. Do this for each data source. If all the data sources have the same structure, you will only need one mail merge main document and you will only need to change the data source for each merge. However, if the data sources are different, you may need to change the maping of data source columns to table columns for each merge. d. Create a new Word document and use Insert|File to insert each output document into the new document. e. get rid of any paragraph marks between the various tables to create a single table f. select the table and use the Table|Table properties|Column feature to align the columns of the various tables (this may be harder than I imagine) g. duplicate the first row, and replace the data in the new first row with the names of the columns h. save the resulting document To merge all your data sources into a single Office Address List (OAL), you could try something like the following... i. Create a new OAL in Word, using the mailmerge facilitites. Save it. Close the Word document. Open the OAL in Access. Open the table Office_Address_List (not the Query Office Address List) in datasheet format j. Assuming for the moment that all your existing .mdbs are OALs with the same columns in the table Office_Address_List, for each existing OAL... open the OAL. open the Office_Address_List table in datasheet format click the top-left corner of the datasheet to select all the rows and columns Edit|Copy Select the datasheet in the new OAL Select the bottom (empty) row Edit|Paste k. get rid of any blank rows. You might also need to deduplicate the records (I can't offer any suggestions on this issue right now) l. close the database m. try using it as a data source in Word - if Word recognises it as an OAL, it will let you edit the data in the Edit|Recipients dialog. Adding the rows from your Word data source to the OAL is a bit trickier. I think the easy way to do it would be n. merge the contents of the Word data source to a new table (as in (b) to (f) above) containing exactly the same columns as the Office_Address_List table. o. select the resulting table in Word, Edit|Copy, and paste the data roughly as described in (j). If your Access data sources are not OALs, and you want an OAL as output, you could either construct Access queries to transform each data source into a table with the same structure as the OAL, or you could use approach (a) to (h) to convert each Access table into a Word table, then copy each Word table into an OAL as per (n) and (o). And so on... Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... Hi Peter, Thank you for your message. One file is a Word Document ".doc" and the others are MDB files. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: What format are the data files? Comma delimited? Word documents? The kind of Office Address List that Word creates as standard in Word 2002/2003, with a ..mdb extension? Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
#7
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Thanks Peter!
"Peter Jamieson" wrote: Well, the answer partly depends on what format you want to use in future. A table in Word is the simplest in some respects - e.g. since you already have Word, you definitely have the tool you need to maintain the list, but Word data sources can be difficult to edit directly if there are a lot of columns, and some versions of Word load Word data sources comparatively slowly. If you have got used to using the Office Address List (OAL) format (.mdb) format in Word 2002/2003, that may be a better long-term approach, but you will need Access to apply the general approach I suggest below. The following assume you are using Word 2002/2003. One way to merge all your data sources into a single Word data source is: a. Decide what columns you need. If there are over (about) 63, you will not be able to use a table in a Word document. You could create a tab-delimited source, but you may have difficulty dealing with any multiline fields such as address blocks. b. Create a catalog (directory) merge in Word with a single table row containing the number of columns you need, (or a single paragraph containing the number of tab-delimited columns you need). c. insert the appropriate merge fields from your data source into each the relevant table cells in the usual way, perform a merge to an output document, and save the document. Do this for each data source. If all the data sources have the same structure, you will only need one mail merge main document and you will only need to change the data source for each merge. However, if the data sources are different, you may need to change the maping of data source columns to table columns for each merge. d. Create a new Word document and use Insert|File to insert each output document into the new document. e. get rid of any paragraph marks between the various tables to create a single table f. select the table and use the Table|Table properties|Column feature to align the columns of the various tables (this may be harder than I imagine) g. duplicate the first row, and replace the data in the new first row with the names of the columns h. save the resulting document To merge all your data sources into a single Office Address List (OAL), you could try something like the following... i. Create a new OAL in Word, using the mailmerge facilitites. Save it. Close the Word document. Open the OAL in Access. Open the table Office_Address_List (not the Query Office Address List) in datasheet format j. Assuming for the moment that all your existing .mdbs are OALs with the same columns in the table Office_Address_List, for each existing OAL... open the OAL. open the Office_Address_List table in datasheet format click the top-left corner of the datasheet to select all the rows and columns Edit|Copy Select the datasheet in the new OAL Select the bottom (empty) row Edit|Paste k. get rid of any blank rows. You might also need to deduplicate the records (I can't offer any suggestions on this issue right now) l. close the database m. try using it as a data source in Word - if Word recognises it as an OAL, it will let you edit the data in the Edit|Recipients dialog. Adding the rows from your Word data source to the OAL is a bit trickier. I think the easy way to do it would be n. merge the contents of the Word data source to a new table (as in (b) to (f) above) containing exactly the same columns as the Office_Address_List table. o. select the resulting table in Word, Edit|Copy, and paste the data roughly as described in (j). If your Access data sources are not OALs, and you want an OAL as output, you could either construct Access queries to transform each data source into a table with the same structure as the OAL, or you could use approach (a) to (h) to convert each Access table into a Word table, then copy each Word table into an OAL as per (n) and (o). And so on... Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... Hi Peter, Thank you for your message. One file is a Word Document ".doc" and the others are MDB files. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: What format are the data files? Comma delimited? Word documents? The kind of Office Address List that Word creates as standard in Word 2002/2003, with a ..mdb extension? Peter Jamieson "Robert" wrote in message ... I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into one master file. Is this possible? |
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