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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / June 2006MailMerge - Word 2000
I currently have a database holding details of 400+ members. Each member is to receive a letter containing standard text. Depending on circumstances each member will need variable paragraph(s) inserting in the same place within the document (somewhere in the middle of the standard text). There are approximately 20 different paragraphs and one member might need two of the standard paragraphs inserting whilst another might need nine of the standard paragraphs inserting, etc. I can't think of any way to link the individual paragraphs to each member's record in the database to enable me to merge. Is this possible? At the moment the paragraphs are just one long document. The only way I can think of is to save each individual paragraph as an autotext entry and then insert the required paragraph into the individual letters, although this would mean re-typing all the names, address, salutation again. Peter Jamieson kindly explained IF fields. However, when I looked at the paragraphs to be inserted many contained subheadings, parts of the text were in colour, bullets, etc. Peter then suggested I search newsgroups for examples of INCLUDETEXT, AUTOTEXT, etc. Can anyone please help with this procedure? Regards Sandra Hi Sandra, I didn't provide the details because I hoped what you had would be enough. NB - you can search by going to groups.google.com and entering a few useful keywords - if you search for INCLUDETEXT or AUTOTEXT and the name of one of the regular contributors here such as Meister Robbins Mayor or Jamieson you will probably find rather a lot of articles on these subjects. You can use the advanced search there to restrict the search to the more recent articles, which is usually helpful. This is what you do, at least for INCLUDETEXT Create a separate document - let's call it c;\myparas\myparas.doc Insert the text chunks you want to use into that document. Select each paragraph in turn and use Insert|Bookmark to bookmark each paragraph with a different name - let's call them Para1,Para2,...,Para20. It may or may not be useful to bookmark the text chunks without their final paragraph marks (click the Show/Hide button in the standard toolbar to help you do that). Position the insertion point at the beginning of the document (so it's a "point" selection) and insert a bookmark called Para0 In your mail merge main document, use { INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para1 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para1" "Para0" } }{ INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para2 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para2" "Para0" } }{ INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para3 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para3" "Para0" } } etc. As before, all the {} need to be the field braces you can insert using ctrl-F9. You have to do the INCLUDETEXT and IFs this way around or you end up with { IF condition "{ INCLUDETEXT something }" "" } and the same problems as you probably had before. There are other ways to do this, but I think that's probably one of the simpler methods. Peter Jamieson >I currently have a database holding details of 400+ members. > [quoted text clipped - 28 lines] > Regards > Sandra Hi Peter I'm really sorry to keep coming back with this but I'm clearly doing something wrong. I've inserted all the paragraphs into a document, highlighted each paragraph and bookmarked. I've highlighted the paragraph mark at the top of the document and called it "Para0". I now have 9 bookmarks (just testing at the moment). I've then created a folder named "myparas"on my "h" drive and named the document "myparas". I've then entered Para1, Para2 and Para 3 on the data source and put "Y" underneath each of these headings. In the middle of the main document (where I want the variable paragraphs to be inserted), I've inserted { INCLUDETEXT "h:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para1 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para1" "Para0" } }{ INCLUDETEXT "h:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para2 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para2" "Para0" } }{ INCLUDETEXT "h:\\myparas\\myparas.doc" { IF "{ MERGEFIELD Para3 \*Upper }" = "Y" "Para3" "Para0" } } I've then followed the steps to set up a mailmerge, ie: inserted name, address, etc, It does insert the address details, etc, but does not appear to link to the 'h' document. What step(s) am I missing? Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Regards Sandra >Hi Sandra, > [quoted text clipped - 51 lines] >> Regards >> Sandra > but I'm clearly doing > something wrong. Not necessarily... When you open your mail merge main document (and are connected to the data source), do you see any of the paragraphs? If you show the fields in preview mode (where you can see the results - use Alt-F9 and Tools|Customize to enable the mailmerge toolbar and click the <<>> button if necessary) do you see those paragraphs included? If not, if you select the whole document using ctrl-A, then update all the fields using F9, do you see them? If not, can you use Alt-F9 to expose the underlying field codes, then select the first IF field, right-click and select Toggle Field Codes to show the result of the IF field. What do you see? (You should see Para1.) If you don't, temporarily replace the IF field with the text Para1, try updating the INCLUDETEXT field again and show its result. If you don't see the paragraph bookmarked Para1 included, then my guess is that there is something wrong with the bookmarks. Unfortunately, you may also have to follow this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330554 Peter Jamieson > Hi Peter > [quoted text clipped - 98 lines] >>> Regards >>> Sandra Hi Peter Yes, it worked. Fantastic. Thank you so much. After hours and hours of trying I eventually deleted the field codes in the main document, retyped them (identically!) pressed Alt and F9 and could immediately see the paragraphs. Prior to retyping, when I pressed Alt and F9 nothing happened - the fields were as if they were ordinary text. Again, thank you so much for your patience and for your detailed explanations. Regards Sandra >> but I'm clearly doing >> something wrong. [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] >>>> Regards >>>> Sandra Glad it works now. I would generally assume that there was a tiny difference in the way you did things but it ain't necessarily so! Peter Jamieson > Hi Peter > [quoted text clipped - 48 lines] >>>>> Regards >>>>> Sandra I have today come across a problem and wonder if there is a solution? I been creating the mailmerges in batches, inserting all the variables. To date all members have received all variables and it's worked perfectly. Now some members are to receive a letter with, for example, para1, para2 and para8. However, when I merge the document I'm gettings paragraphs marks for para3, para4...........para7. I've looked at the bookmarks and made sure I haven't inserted the last paragraph mark. Can you held? Regards >Glad it works now. I would generally assume that there was a tiny difference >in the way you did things but it ain't necessarily so! [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >>>>>> Regards >>>>>> Sandra Hi Peter Again, thank you so very much for the explanation and also for your quick response (there is a deadline with this merge for Friday). Also, thank you for telling me about the Google groups. As mentioned, my knowledge with mail merges, fields, etc. is very, very basic so here's hoping! Regards Sandra >I currently have a database holding details of 400+ members. > [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >Regards >Sandra
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