[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, I suspect this is definitely a job for Access (or possibly dedicated
family tree software), but I have no experience with those at all.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Dan Freeman" wrote in message
...
And for the best result with this much data, use a *DATABASE* application.
;-)

Dan

Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
I'm not an Excel expert by any means, though some here may be. For a
better shot at reaching one, though, you might want to start at the
other end, posting in an Excel NG and asking about the best way to
import a huge Word table.


"YOMAMAPAWA" wrote in message
...
On Apr 23, 7:51 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
What I mean by "lose your place" is that if a record has so many
columns that they don't all fit on the screen, it is handy to have
the leftmost column or two frozen so that the person's name, for
example, remains visible
when you scroll over to the far right. And in cases where you may
have a lot
of columns of figures, it's handy to have the heading row frozen so
you can
always see the column label.s

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"YOMAMAPAWA" wrote in message

...

"Records." In the file I'm currently working there are, so far,
18,836 individuals, in three separate files - birth, death,
marriage - representing only the ancestors of my paternal
grandmother. ( A quick aside: We each have 4 grandparents, 8
g-grandparents, 16, gg-, 32 ggg-, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048,
4096, 8192, 16384, 32768............totaling maybe 65532. You can
see how these files can quickly grow, particularly if your
ancestors were amongst the earliest European settlers to the
United States - they were almost all from well-known families with
excellent records, going back to Golgotha or some dang where - and
will steadily grow in scale. Losing my place is OK, i just hit
search and zoom to the spouse or whatever. What I'm trying to
ACCOMPLISH is collation - sorting everyone into year of birth,
say, then Mom, then spouse, then locale, in order to find what
they call the "Brick Wall" - the missing ancestor that ties you to
the others. Or to at least extrapolate.

I will have to teach myself to use Excel, haven't even begun. OR,
copy each file and tediously select only the pertinent columns,
delete all the rest, DO my sort, then compare. Nastay.

Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
FWIW, I do maintainlargedatabases in Excel and then use them to
produce
mail merges in Word. How many records do you have? One specific
advantage
in
Excel (aside from the ability to deal with more records) is that
you can
use
Freeze Panes to keep the heading row and any desired number of
columns in
view all the time so you don't lose your place.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"YOMAMAPAWA" wrote in message
...
On Apr 23, 5:50 am, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
wrote:
Also, note that 48 MB is above the maximum allowable size for a
text-only
Word doc (the limit is 32 MB). Unless the document contains
graphics
or
something else besides text, there may be other problems ahead.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Graham Mayor" wrote in message

...

Transfer thetableto Excel and sort it there.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web sitewww.gmayor.com
Word MVP web sitehttp://word.mvps.org


YOMAMAPAWA wrote:
I do genealogy and I'm building monster tables. They are
useless if
not complete, for purposes of sorting by spouse, place or date
of
birth, parents, etc. When I reach a certain size I get that
message.
The largest, currently, is 48,000 KB. They are simple text
tables,
no
graphics or bells and whistles, and I work in Normal view.
What do?

Thank you both. Disaster. How limiting. I'm an absolute newbie at
this
but an old programmer from the sixties. I'll have to build a new
program. HA! I don't have a clue where to begin. I'm attempting
an interactive search database using Word. Looks impossible. All
I want is COLLATION. I can't believe Word customers keep coming
back with such a strict limitation on their work. What do
businesses do? Not collate? Cut their vendors off when they
becometoomany? I have 15 columns - surname, first name, surname
spouse, first name spouse, parents, surname mother,
birth/death/marriage year, ditto month, ditto
day, ditto country, ditto state/shire/province, ditto
county/commune,
ditto town, ditto parish. If ANY of these columns cannot be
sorted, the whole thing is useless. Any solutions? Should I buy
Word 2007 Professional?

Graham, when I open Excel all I see is a sea of cells. I don't
have a
clue - tried - how to copy my Word file into Excel. I've just
scarcely
learned how to Merge/Split Columns. Using these products is
EXACTLY like being a member of a bovine herd, wandering
aimlessly in idle search of something tasty - no direction, no
instructions - unless you
count the help files, which protocol of use seems to have no
rhyme nor
reason. Like the cattle. If I had had to learn Cobol, Basic, or
Fortran - EVEN RPG - in this manner, I would still today be
using a collator to hand-sort all the data. Or sitting on the
floor sorting cards by color!

Ah, I see, said the blind old woman. Handy.

OK. I tried Excel, no dice. It WOULD NOT copy the 48MB doc. It WOULD
copy one section, but the first column showed up split. My original
format:

SUTHERLAND-1011,
HUGH

I tried a Merge Cells, but it just kept only the first half of the
first cell, it would not highlight.

I then tried replacing the "," with "*", still no luck. I tried
hitting the Format mark next to the file, as the help file suggested,
to "keep source format", no dice. I even went ahead and tried to sort
column 3, surname spouse, and it announced that they were different
sizes, thus no dice. I then "hid" all but the filled columns,
formatted row height to equal values - just to keep the little
b_____d happy - still no dice. I am at this point ready to toss the
whole system over the cliff and take up golf or Sumo wrestling. I
give. Aside: I think I have a serious problem somewhere. One would think
that this HP Pavilion a1587c would have the capacity to deal with
these simple tables, but everything I do the tower just HOWLS. It
took FIVE FULL MINUTES to accomplish that simple copy. This is not
right, what could it be?