Sorry for this long winded explanation.
I am trying to create a report using Word 2000 with Mail Merge. My data
source is an Excel file with around 350 records, each containing around 100
elements.

30 of those elements describe a product family, with the remaining data
detailing ordering information, etc. I have sorted the records so that they
are family oriented.

Because all records in a family share common information, I would like the
first record of a family to print an introductory table using those first 30
elements, with all subsequent records creating tables and ignoring those
first common elements

When I get to the first record of the next family, I again would like to
start a new page with the introductory table followed by table after table
of the details of each subsequent record.

I thought that in the past I had created something like this using
If-Then-Else, but when I just looked at this, it seems to pertain to text
only. Is there a way to use the IF-Then-Else and include merge fields as
well as text?

Thanks for any assistance that you could lend me.

Is there a good resource that covers the details of Mail Merge. In every
resource I could find, they only give a very rudimentary explanation.

Thanks again,

Craig