Mail Merge (Word 97/Excel 97)

[lesliesgottlieb]

I have a mail merge setup in Word I would like to use with a tabed excel file of names, addresses etc where the top line on each tab is the same field headers.
How do I specify the specfic tab I want to use in each particular merge - for each letter I do, I want all the records in that tab.

Thanks,
Leslie

[Charles Kenyon]

Hi,

Have you tried using the mail merge helper (although it is better in Word 2000)?

I'm having some trouble with your terms so I'm going to try to "translate" my guesses as to what it is you mean.

You have an Excel worksheet with your data in it.

In the first row, you have the field names, one name per column, that describes what is in that column, i.e.:
|Last Name | First Name | Street | City | State| Zip | Account#|

Then each row in Excel that follows makes up a data record. This should work fine with the Merge helper. Try it. Tools => MailMerge...

You can create a new primary merge document and tell Word that your excel table is your data source. You'll be told that there are no merge fields in your main document and invited to change that. Accept the offer. Word has added a merge toolbar to your display that includes a drop-down list of your Word fields based on the column headings in your spreadsheet.

Insert your merge fields where appropriate. Then click on the display data button which looks like << >> with ABC underneath it. This lets you use the other buttons on the toolbar to scroll through your data list.

To actually perform the merge, if you only want certain records, you either have to tell Word that using the Insert Word Field commands or preselect your data. It is probably easier in most cases to simply sort your Excel table so that you can grab a group of rows, copy them, and paste them into a different spreadsheet. (Copy the header row, too.) Save that spreadsheet and switch your merge to use that as your data source.

For more on mailmerge follow the links at <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#mailmerge> Word Web Resources - MailMerge</A> (addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm) - especially Cindy Meister's series of articles.

Hope this helps,