Creating a Table of Contents inside a Directory Mail Merge

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odudley - 24 Mar 2007 01:02 GMT

My current dilema is that I cannot figure out how to enter a TOC into my
mailmerge. I have an introductory page that has a Title and TOC, then a
pagebreak, then the directory. The table of contents is based on a field in
the directory. The directory function is causing my title, TOC and pagebreak
to repeat before each record. There are many records so cutting and pasting
is not an option.

What I Want:

"Document Title as Written"

[TOC] -- listing each individual title and page

pagebreak

<<title>> -- field formatted as Heading1 so each title will show in TOC
<<text>> -- often more than one page
pagebreak
<<nextrecord>>
<<title>>
<<text>>
pagebreak
<<nextrecord>>

What I Have:
"Document Title as Written"

[TOC] -- views as "<<title>>"..............2

pagebreak

<<title>> -- shows title of first record
<<text>> -- shows text of first record
pagebreak
<<nextrecord>>
"Document Title as Written"

[TOC] -- views as "<<title>>"..............4

pagebreak

<<title>> -- shows title of next record
<<text>> -- shows text of next record
pagebreak
<<nextrecord>>

PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!!!

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 24 Mar 2007 07:40 GMT

What you trying to do sounds like a "multiple items per condition (=key
field)" mailmerge (with an added complication) which Word does not really
have the ability to do:

You may find something in the "Group Multiple items for a single condition"
item on fellow MVP Cindy Meister's website at

http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/mergfaq1.htm#DBPic

Or take a look at the following Knowledge Base Article

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;211303

or at:

http://cornell.veplan.net/article.aspx?&a=3815

However, I am inclined to think that your only option is going to be to
perform the directory merge use a main document that has nothing other than
the merge fields in it, and then manually copy in the document title and
create the table of contents. If you apply a Heading 1 style to the
<<title>> mergefield in the mail merge main document, it will be retained
when you execute the merge to the new document so that it is possible to
insert the table of contents in the normal way in that new document. That
is going to be a lot simpler than cleaning up what you now have.

Signature

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

> My current dilema is that I cannot figure out how to enter a TOC into my
> mailmerge. I have an introductory page that has a Title and TOC, then a
[quoted text clipped - 46 lines]
>
> PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!!!

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odudley - 28 Mar 2007 01:03 GMT

Thanks Doug. I found a workaround tho. I formatted the "Title" field as
Heading 1. Then created a macro to insert the TOC after merging to a new
document. This works perfectly.

> What you trying to do sounds like a "multiple items per condition (=key
> field)" mailmerge (with an added complication) which Word does not really
[quoted text clipped - 72 lines]
> >
> > PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!!!

Reply to this Message