Formal wedding invit. envelopes, lots of conditions

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Jessica - 22 Jun 2004 00:58 GMT

I am a mailmerge newbie, & apologize if this has been covered umpteen times (I have checked back in the log, but can't find anything to cover this).

Doing 180 wedding invitation envelopes for a friend (from Excel spr.sheet) so need formalities thus:
Mr & Mrs Thomas Smith (if married couple)
Ms Sue Jones & Mr Charlie Bloggs (if nonmarried couple)
Mr Thomas Smith (if alone)
Ms Janet Underhill (ditto)
Fields are: Male1stname MaleLastName, Female1stname, FemaleLastname.

So if the malelastname & femalelastname are the same, then the invitation gets Mr & Mrs malefirstname malelastname: Mr & Mrs Thomas Smith
If his & her last names are different, then it's Ms. femalefirstname femalelastname & Mr. malefirstname malelastname: Ms Sue Jones & Mr Charlie Bloggs
If there are no malename fields at all, then just Ms femalefirstname femalelastname, & vice versa if only malename fields.

What I need to know is:
1. is this completely impossible & I shouldn't even bother slogging through HELP;
2. It's possible, but over any newbie's head (which is what I suspect);
3. If 1 or 2, then what might be possible?

Many, many thanks!

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JMJones

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garfield-n-odie - 22 Jun 2004 02:11 GMT

Hi Jessica. It's not so difficult that you can't do it yourself. But I
think it would be much easier to do evaluate the names in Excel than in
Word. If I were you, in Excel I would insert a column called
InvitationName and write a formula to evaluate the conditions you
describe. Like this:

_| A | B | C | D | E |
1|Male1stName MaleLastName Female1stName FemaleLastName InvitationName
2|
3|
4|

In cell E2 in the example above, write the formula:
=IF(ISBLANK(B2),"Ms. "&C2&" "&D2,
IF(ISBLANK(D2),"Mr. "&A2&" "&B2,
IF(B2=D2,"Mr. and Mrs. "&A2&" "&B2,
"Ms. "&C2&" "&D2&" and Mr. "&A2&" "&B2)))

but write the formula as one long line, not on four short lines as
above, and adjust the A B C D column references to match whatever your
columns actually are. Copy the formula in cell E2 to cells E3 thru E181
or whatever the last row of names is. Then in Word, choose the
InvitationName field as the source for the name data.

Hope this helps. Write back if you have any problems.

> I am a mailmerge newbie, & apologize if this has been covered umpteen times (I have checked back in the log, but can't find anything to cover this).
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Many, many thanks!

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