I have several mail merge data files and would like to consolidate them into
one master file. Is this possible?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?