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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / June 2004Sorting data according to the mm-yy in merged file
I have a question regarding merging. Question --------- Is there a way to sort the data at the same time it is merged to the form letter? I have in the data file information such as: Institution Name Beginning and End of Year-MM (WA) Whatcom C C 0601 0802 (CA) USC 0900 0601 (WA) U W 0399 0600 and I need to sort the order of the three schools into the following (see below) based on the ending year and month with the most recent at the bottom. I can use the download data if I can get the mail merge to sort that info for me but right now I have to reenter the names of schools and their attendance dates in the above mentioned order as such. (WA) U W 0399 0600 (CA) USC 0900 0601 (WA) Whatcom C C 0601 0802 Do I have any hope? Background ----------- I have a mail merge job that is repeatedly done on well over 3 thousand entries every year. I use Access to get the data and I export the data into Excel, then open in and convert it into a word .sf file so that I can add additional information to some fields that don't exist in the database in Access. Thank you ever so much! Kath > word .sf file What type of file is this? If it is a Word document containing either tab-separated or comma-separated fields, etc., or a table, you can use the Sort option in the Table menu to sort on one to three columns before you merge. As part of the merge specification, you can apply a sort. In Word 97/2000, use the Query Options button in the Mail Merge Helper. In Word 2002 and 2003, go into the "Edit Recipients" dialog, select the drop-down arrow on one of the column headings, and select Advanced... But you may find that that apporach leads you somewhere you don't really want to go (such as MS Query) or does not actually sort as you expect, so test carefully!  SignaturePeter Jamieson > I have a question regarding merging. > [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] > > Kath Hi Peter: Thank you for taking the time to answer my odd question! To clarify, I know how to sort a certain field of all records in the data file.( BTW: *.sf is the secondary data file created with MailMerge Help, or at least that is how it is shown in my computer). My problem is, I have data like the follow in the data file : Student A school1 BeginDate1 EndDate1 School2 BeginDate2 EndDate2 School3 BeginDate3 EndDate3... Student B school1 BeginDate1 EndDate1 School2 BeginDate2 EndDate2 Student C school1 BeginDate1 EndDate1 Student A school1 BeginDate1 EndDate1 School2 BeginDate2 EndDate2 School3 BeginDate3 EndDate3 School4 BeginDate4 EndDate4... and I want to (if possible) auto sort the EndDate1,2,3 within each student's record accordingly. Is there hope? Thanks again! Kath >-----Original Message----- >> word .sf file [quoted text clipped - 53 lines] > >. So you mean that if EndDate2 is before EndDate1 that you want EndDate2 to become EndDate1 and EndDate1 to become EndDate2? SignaturePlease post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis. Hope this helps Doug Robbins - Word MVP > Hi Peter: > Thank you for taking the time to answer my odd question! [quoted text clipped - 96 lines] > > > >. No. I mean when a person has attended multiple schools, we put the schools in the order of their attendance as indicated by their enddate with each school. So it looks like we sorted the information of the schools by the enddates. The begindates don't matter. Hope it is clear. Thanks, Kath >-----Original Message----- >So you mean that if EndDate2 is before EndDate1 that you want EndDate2 to [quoted text clipped - 103 lines] > >. If you want to email the datafile to me I'll see if I can put a macro together that will do what you want. SignaturePlease post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis. Hope this helps Doug Robbins - Word MVP > No. I mean when a person has attended multiple schools, we > put the schools in the order of their attendance as [quoted text clipped - 130 lines] > > > >. What to do depends on precisely what format you need to merge - if you have multiple events/dates in /a single record/ then you are probably intending to process using a specific technique in Word where you can assume a maximum number of records. Off the top of my head I can't think of a /really/ straightforward to sort those records in Word - I would have to think in terms of writing a Word VBA macro to do it, or import into Access (as Doug suggested), normalise the data, sort, and re-aggregate the data in some way. It might also be possible to do a sequence of merges to get the data how you want it but a. I'm not sure, and I won't be able to think about it for a few days b. it seems liekly to be overkill - i.e. if you need to do that, you probably need to think about producing the output a different way. SignaturePeter Jamieson > Hi Peter: > Thank you for taking the time to answer my odd question! [quoted text clipped - 96 lines] > > > >. |
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