Automated Mail Merge With Excel Sheet containing data.

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ksg - 07 Mar 2007 15:29 GMT

I have an automated mail merge program that accepts data from different
systems. The data is in an Excel Sheet. Some of the data has blanks in the
data. The data would look something like this:

" DataField1"
" DataFields2"
etc.

I need to keep the leading blanks so the data will line up on the merged
document.

I have tried enclosing the data in "" in the Excel Cell. This keeps the
blanks, but the quotes print out on the document.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

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Peter Jamieson - 07 Mar 2007 15:54 GMT

If you want to right-align all these texts you would probably be better off
putting a right-aligned tab in Word immediately before the appropriate merge
field.

[Otherwise, unfortunately all the connection methods that Word can use to
get data from Excel strip off both leading and trailing blanks, except the
Excel converter, which is no longer provided with Word (since version 2002
or 2003, I forget which) or in the add-on converter pack. If you really
want, I think you can get a copy of the converter from Graham Mayor's
download page at http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm . Be aware that the
converter has been withdrawn for a reason, has not been maintained for some
time, and will always pop up a dialog whenever you connect using it]

Peter Jamieson

>I have an automated mail merge program that accepts data from different
> systems. The data is in an Excel Sheet. Some of the data has blanks in
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> Thanks

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ksg - 07 Mar 2007 16:27 GMT

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I can not right justify and have the
data look right. Here is an example of the data:

907__BASIC MET PROF 518__CBC W/DIFF 106__AFP
1600__COMP MET PROF 520__CBC W/O DIFF 428__CEA
915__LIPID PROF 546__PLATELET CT 210__CA 19-9
1601__HEP FUNC PROF 276__IRON PROF
Each line is a formatted line of text that I am treating as a merge field.

There is a lot of this data and there is no way to reliably parse the data
into individual fields. When I merge the delimited file manually using Word
it works fine with quotes, but using the program the merge document prints
with the quotes.

If you have any other ideas, please let me know.

Thanks

> If you want to right-align all these texts you would probably be better off
> putting a right-aligned tab in Word immediately before the appropriate merge
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> >
> > Thanks

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Peter Jamieson - 07 Mar 2007 17:34 GMT

The simplest approach is probably to use quotes, or preferably a character
sequence that you know never appears in the data, merge to an output
document, then use VBA (say) to do a global find/replace to remove the
quotes or character sequence.

Other than that, I think you would have to merge with another format.
However,
a. the only one that I know (off the top of my head) will preserve the
spaces is to use a Word document with a table as the data source, and that
has a limit of 63 or 64 columns. To try it, you can copy/paste your Excel
sheet into a Word document, using Word Edit|"Paste Special" and selecting
Formatted Text (RTF) as the format.
b. you would either have to automate Excel and Word to copy/paste (somehow
or other) the data into Word, or maybe you could start with whatever source
you are using to populate your Excel sheet. However, in that case, the
question of how to get the data into Word while preserving the spaces does
not go away easily.

Peter Jamieson

> Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I can not right justify and have the
> data look right. Here is an example of the data:
[quoted text clipped - 56 lines]
>> >
>> > Thanks

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ksg - 07 Mar 2007 20:30 GMT

Thanks Peter.

I am already merging to a new document to accommodate the printing of
multiple copies so I think I will try the Global Change. Do you have an
example of the Global Change function?

Again thanks for your help. Your help is invaluable for those of us who
don't do this type of coding everyday.

> The simplest approach is probably to use quotes, or preferably a character
> sequence that you know never appears in the data, merge to an output
[quoted text clipped - 76 lines]
> >> >
> >> > Thanks

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Peter Jamieson - 08 Mar 2007 07:54 GMT

For example, when the new document has been created and is the active
document (and it usually is immediately after the merge, something like

With ActiveDocument.Content.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = "the text you are looking for"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With

Peter Jamieson

> Thanks Peter.
>
[quoted text clipped - 100 lines]
>> >> >
>> >> > Thanks

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