[Kev[_2_]]

Hi all,

I am sure I am not the first person wanting to do this so I hope
someone can help me. I will use a fictional example of what I would
like to do to illustrate the problem, although this sample bears no
resemblance to the real data.


I have a merge file with 3 fields name, address and products.

"products" could either be a delimiter seperated list or a simple
space seperated.

For example, the record could be

"Kevin","My house","computer monitor scanner printer"

or

"Kevin","My house","computer;monitor;scanner;printer"

When I perform the merge, I would like the four products on a seperate
line in the document. I do not want a seperate field for each product
as the number of products is arbitrary.

Is it possible to do this easily in Word.

Or would a more complicated merge file format be required, with some
kind of ID

e.g.

"1","Kevin","My house"
"1","computer"
"1","monitor"
"1","scanner"
"1","printer"
"2","John","His house"
"2","bike"
"2","car"
etc

in other words, each single mail merge spans multiple lines in the
file.

If anyone has any experience of this scenario I would be grateful for
your comments.

Thanks in anticipation

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Sounds like you are probably 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://cornell.veplan.net/article.aspx?&a=3815

Or, if you create a Catalog (on in Word XP and later, it's called Directory)
type mailmerge main document with the mergefields in the cells of a one row
table in the mailmerge main document with the keyfield in the first cell in
the row and then execute that merge to a new document and then run the
following macro, it will create separate tables with the records for each
key field in them. With a bit of further development, you may be able to
get it to do what you want.

' Macro to create multiple items per condition in separate tables from a
directory type mailmerge

Dim source As Document, target As Document, scat As Range, tcat As Range
Dim data As Range, stab As Table, ttab As Table
Dim i As Long, j As Long, k As Long, n As Long
Set source = ActiveDocument
Set target = Documents.Add
Set stab = source.Tables(1)
k = stab.Columns.Count
Set ttab = target.Tables.Add(Range:=Selection.Range, numrows:=1,
numcolumns:=k - 1)
Set scat = stab.Cell(1, 1).Range
scat.End = scat.End - 1
ttab.Cell(1, 1).Range = scat
j = ttab.Rows.Count
For i = 1 To stab.Rows.Count
Set tcat = ttab.Cell(j, 1).Range
tcat.End = tcat.End - 1
Set scat = stab.Cell(i, 1).Range
scat.End = scat.End - 1
If scat tcat Then
ttab.Rows.Add
j = ttab.Rows.Count
ttab.Cell(j, 1).Range = scat
ttab.Cell(j, 1).Range.Paragraphs(1).PageBreakBefore = True
ttab.Rows.Add
ttab.Cell(j + 1, 1).Range.Paragraphs(1).PageBreakBefore = False
For n = 2 To k
Set data = stab.Cell(i, n).Range
data.End = data.End - 1
ttab.Cell(ttab.Rows.Count, n - 1).Range = data
Next n
Else
ttab.Rows.Add
For n = 2 To k
Set data = stab.Cell(i, n).Range
data.End = data.End - 1
ttab.Cell(ttab.Rows.Count, n - 1).Range = data
Next n
End If
Next i


--
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

"Kev" wrote in message
ps.com...
Hi all,

I am sure I am not the first person wanting to do this so I hope
someone can help me. I will use a fictional example of what I would
like to do to illustrate the problem, although this sample bears no
resemblance to the real data.


I have a merge file with 3 fields name, address and products.

"products" could either be a delimiter seperated list or a simple
space seperated.

For example, the record could be

"Kevin","My house","computer monitor scanner printer"

or

"Kevin","My house","computer;monitor;scanner;printer"

When I perform the merge, I would like the four products on a seperate
line in the document. I do not want a seperate field for each product
as the number of products is arbitrary.

Is it possible to do this easily in Word.

Or would a more complicated merge file format be required, with some
kind of ID

e.g.

"1","Kevin","My house"
"1","computer"
"1","monitor"
"1","scanner"
"1","printer"
"2","John","His house"
"2","bike"
"2","car"
etc

in other words, each single mail merge spans multiple lines in the
file.

If anyone has any experience of this scenario I would be grateful for
your comments.

Thanks in anticipation