[MJGift]

How can I take my addresses and put them into a simple list with only some of
the elements from the table? I'm using Word 2007

[Peter Jamieson]

It's not completely clear what you mean but in essence if you have a
data source with one column for each part of your address (e.g. one
field for street address, one for city, one for country then you could
produce either
a. a "one line per address" type listing, e.g.

Street City Country
1 High Street Anytown U.K.
2 Station Road Blackpool U.K.

etc., or

b. a multiple lines per address type listing

1 High Street
Anytown
U.K.

2 Station Road
Blackpool
U.K.

In either case you would use a Directory merge.

For (a) you can insert a merge field for each field you want in the
list, separated by tabs, and have a total of two paragraph marks in the
document. Then merge to a new document and add headers. Or you can
insert a one-row table with one column for each field you want, insert
one mergefield into each column, and merge to a new document, then add a
header row.

For (b) you can insert one field per row, with a blank line or two at
the end to act as a separator. If all your addresses are for a
particular country with a standard address layout you might want to use
more than one field on some rows, e.g. for City, State Zip in the USA.
If you want the appropriate layout for addresses in several different
countries you would have to work a bit harder (although you might find
that you could do much of what you wanted using the ADDRESSBLOCK instead
of individual merge fields, it is still, I think, a bit of a risk).


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

MJGift wrote:
How can I take my addresses and put them into a simple list with only some of
the elements from the table? I'm using Word 2007

[Monte Milanuk]

Peter,

Thank you for that, I've been beating my head bloody against the keyboard
trying to make something like that work using just Excel until someone
suggested using Mailmerge... which I'd thought was only for form letters

I do have one additional question... is there a (relatively) simple way to
have the list auto-propagate based on a dynamically sized data source?

In my particular situation, I want/need a listing of 'Last Name', 'First
Name' and then several fields particular to our membership for a printed list
for the people at the door - I don't need their entire address, email, phone
number and everything else in my spreadsheet about them. So what you showed
in example (a) was just about exactly what I was looking for... but since our
membership waxes and wanes through out the year (some 'life' members, but a
large number of annual members also who renew at some point after the new
calendar year - might be two weeks, might be six months), the list that the
mailmerge is sourcing changes in size almost weekly, and thus the printed
list will as well. How do I make the list dynamic to match the source (like
the mail-merge wizard does)?

TIA,

Monte

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

It's not completely clear what you mean but in essence if you have a
data source with one column for each part of your address (e.g. one
field for street address, one for city, one for country then you could
produce either
a. a "one line per address" type listing, e.g.

Street City Country
1 High Street Anytown U.K.
2 Station Road Blackpool U.K.

etc., or

b. a multiple lines per address type listing

1 High Street
Anytown
U.K.

2 Station Road
Blackpool
U.K.

In either case you would use a Directory merge.

For (a) you can insert a merge field for each field you want in the
list, separated by tabs, and have a total of two paragraph marks in the
document. Then merge to a new document and add headers. Or you can
insert a one-row table with one column for each field you want, insert
one mergefield into each column, and merge to a new document, then add a
header row.

For (b) you can insert one field per row, with a blank line or two at
the end to act as a separator. If all your addresses are for a
particular country with a standard address layout you might want to use
more than one field on some rows, e.g. for City, State Zip in the USA.
If you want the appropriate layout for addresses in several different
countries you would have to work a bit harder (although you might find
that you could do much of what you wanted using the ADDRESSBLOCK instead
of individual merge fields, it is still, I think, a bit of a risk).


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

MJGift wrote:
How can I take my addresses and put them into a simple list with only some of
the elements from the table? I'm using Word 2007

[Peter Jamieson]

You mean so that when you modify your Excel sheet, the directory
produced by Mailmerge also changes?

Well, Mailmerge doesn't work that way. What you do is
a. set up your mail merge main document and test it
b. save it (i.e. save the "layout" document, I don't mean the
"results" document)
c. open it and re-run the merge to a new document whenever you feel
the need.

Word has another way to do this general type of thing, and that's to use
the Database toolbar (view-Toolbars) to insert a { DATABASE } field -
you select the data source in the same way as you do for mailmerge,
choose the columns you need, and insert the database as a field. You may
need to use Alt-F9 to see the results. This doesn't work for all data
sources because Word sometimes insists on listing all the fields.
However, if it works OK, you can then
a. save that document
b. when you want a new version, you can open the Word document, select
the field/table, press F9 to update the field, and save the document.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Monte Milanuk wrote:
Peter,

Thank you for that, I've been beating my head bloody against the keyboard
trying to make something like that work using just Excel until someone
suggested using Mailmerge... which I'd thought was only for form letters

I do have one additional question... is there a (relatively) simple way to
have the list auto-propagate based on a dynamically sized data source?

In my particular situation, I want/need a listing of 'Last Name', 'First
Name' and then several fields particular to our membership for a printed list
for the people at the door - I don't need their entire address, email, phone
number and everything else in my spreadsheet about them. So what you showed
in example (a) was just about exactly what I was looking for... but since our
membership waxes and wanes through out the year (some 'life' members, but a
large number of annual members also who renew at some point after the new
calendar year - might be two weeks, might be six months), the list that the
mailmerge is sourcing changes in size almost weekly, and thus the printed
list will as well. How do I make the list dynamic to match the source (like
the mail-merge wizard does)?

TIA,

Monte

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

It's not completely clear what you mean but in essence if you have a
data source with one column for each part of your address (e.g. one
field for street address, one for city, one for country then you could
produce either
a. a "one line per address" type listing, e.g.

Street City Country
1 High Street Anytown U.K.
2 Station Road Blackpool U.K.

etc., or

b. a multiple lines per address type listing

1 High Street
Anytown
U.K.

2 Station Road
Blackpool
U.K.

In either case you would use a Directory merge.

For (a) you can insert a merge field for each field you want in the
list, separated by tabs, and have a total of two paragraph marks in the
document. Then merge to a new document and add headers. Or you can
insert a one-row table with one column for each field you want, insert
one mergefield into each column, and merge to a new document, then add a
header row.

For (b) you can insert one field per row, with a blank line or two at
the end to act as a separator. If all your addresses are for a
particular country with a standard address layout you might want to use
more than one field on some rows, e.g. for City, State Zip in the USA.
If you want the appropriate layout for addresses in several different
countries you would have to work a bit harder (although you might find
that you could do much of what you wanted using the ADDRESSBLOCK instead
of individual merge fields, it is still, I think, a bit of a risk).


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

MJGift wrote:
How can I take my addresses and put them into a simple list with only some of
the elements from the table? I'm using Word 2007

[Monte Milanuk]

Peter,

Actually what I was trying to do (at the time) was use the mailmerge field
codes in table cells (in Word) to try and make the formatting work & look the
way I had in mind. The problem was... as the source size changes, the table
size in Word has to change to match - which results in some back-n-forth
twiddling that I wanted to avoid.

FWIW I'm not going to be the end-user of this particular setup - I'm simply
the one with (barely) enough knowledge and curiosity to make it happen.

At any rate, I think I found what I wanted... using tab stops to control the
field layout on the main document pages, and sticking column names in the
header (also using tab stops) so they repeat every page in the right place.
I'm having one minor issue w/ the data import, which I have a sinking feeling
I know the answer to - but its something that requires re-programming the end
user who inputs the data, which is not trivial

[Peter Jamieson]

Oh I see!

If you're dealing with a table layout the best you can probably do is
fix table cell widths/heights etc.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Monte Milanuk wrote:
Peter,

Actually what I was trying to do (at the time) was use the mailmerge field
codes in table cells (in Word) to try and make the formatting work & look the
way I had in mind. The problem was... as the source size changes, the table
size in Word has to change to match - which results in some back-n-forth
twiddling that I wanted to avoid.

FWIW I'm not going to be the end-user of this particular setup - I'm simply
the one with (barely) enough knowledge and curiosity to make it happen.

At any rate, I think I found what I wanted... using tab stops to control the
field layout on the main document pages, and sticking column names in the
header (also using tab stops) so they repeat every page in the right place.
I'm having one minor issue w/ the data import, which I have a sinking feeling
I know the answer to - but its something that requires re-programming the end
user who inputs the data, which is not trivial