I am merging student course evaluation questionnaire data contained in Excel
with a Word master. Each course is an Excel row unto itself. Each question
has 8 data elements (columns) associated with it -- counts for 5 Likert-scale
answers, N, mean, and STD. In addition, each question has a similar 8-column
set of population statistics. There's also a raft of other stats (mean scores
by GPA, major, gender, etc) that fill up columns on the row.

With only ten questions, plus all of the population stats mentioned above,
I'm quickly bumping up against the 256-column Excel limit. And there's talk
of increasing the number of questions. So I'm quickly realizing that my
existing simple mailmerge scheme won't work. I am going to have to find a way
to merge more fields (desirable) or lose information (less desirable)

Two ideas cross my mind: 1) Have a two-stage mail merge. The first stage
merges the static population statistics and creates the final parent document
that will then merge with the course-specific data. 2) Have each course use
two rows of the spreadsheet. Thus column 1 would hold data item 1 on Row 1
and data item 257 on Row 2.

I am looking for guidance on whether either approach makes sense, which
might make more sense, or if there are more sensible options available out
there. I'd like to make it work with Excel and Word if at all possible.

Using Office 2003, Windows XP, plenty of memory, etc.

Hope this is understandable. All help appreciated.

Sounds like a job for a relational database, such as Access.

--
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
"John V" wrote in message
...
I am merging student course evaluation questionnaire data contained in
Excel
with a Word master. Each course is an Excel row unto itself. Each question
has 8 data elements (columns) associated with it -- counts for 5
Likert-scale
answers, N, mean, and STD. In addition, each question has a similar
8-column
set of population statistics. There's also a raft of other stats (mean
scores
by GPA, major, gender, etc) that fill up columns on the row.

With only ten questions, plus all of the population stats mentioned above,
I'm quickly bumping up against the 256-column Excel limit. And there's
talk
of increasing the number of questions. So I'm quickly realizing that my
existing simple mailmerge scheme won't work. I am going to have to find a
way
to merge more fields (desirable) or lose information (less desirable)

Two ideas cross my mind: 1) Have a two-stage mail merge. The first stage
merges the static population statistics and creates the final parent
document
that will then merge with the course-specific data. 2) Have each course
use
two rows of the spreadsheet. Thus column 1 would hold data item 1 on Row 1
and data item 257 on Row 2.

I am looking for guidance on whether either approach makes sense, which
might make more sense, or if there are more sensible options available out
there. I'd like to make it work with Excel and Word if at all possible.

Using Office 2003, Windows XP, plenty of memory, etc.

Hope this is understandable. All help appreciated.