A
Andrew Collins
Another way to frame the problem quickly:
"Can I set up a mail merge where each recipient has their own catalog in
Publisher 2003?"
Hi there,
I have not used Publisher before (just some Pagemaker). I am very interested
in Publisher 2003's catalog merge capability. I would like to create a survey
booklet that will be customized for each recipient, with about 300 recipients
in total. Of course, a mail merge is the answer. However, for each recipient,
I would like to perform a catalog merge, so that I can ask questions about a
variable number of identical things. Specifically, I have information in a
database about each vehicle in a household(recipient of the survey booklet).
I want to ask questions about each vehicle, but the number of vehicles will
differ from recipient to recipient.
If I had just one recipient and multiple vehicles, it would be trivial
(catalog merge). If I had multiple recipients with one vehicle, it would be
trivial (mail merge). Is there a way to combine the two? I.e. multiple
recipients, each with their own catalog. Is this a feature of Publisher, is
there a hacky way to solve this problem, could I solve the problem
programatically (I'm a programmer first and foremost) or am I asking too much
of the software?
One option would be to have fields in the database for each potential
vehicle, say up to a maximum of 6, then for any field(vehicle) that is not
needed, store an empty string. Then I could get away with a conventional mail
merge. However, I would like to have non-text items for each of the repeated
questions, and do not want to show these if that question does not need to be
asked.
I would greatly appreciate any assistance. I think the catalog merge feature
is neat, and hope that I can use it in my projects.
Thanks!
"Can I set up a mail merge where each recipient has their own catalog in
Publisher 2003?"
Hi there,
I have not used Publisher before (just some Pagemaker). I am very interested
in Publisher 2003's catalog merge capability. I would like to create a survey
booklet that will be customized for each recipient, with about 300 recipients
in total. Of course, a mail merge is the answer. However, for each recipient,
I would like to perform a catalog merge, so that I can ask questions about a
variable number of identical things. Specifically, I have information in a
database about each vehicle in a household(recipient of the survey booklet).
I want to ask questions about each vehicle, but the number of vehicles will
differ from recipient to recipient.
If I had just one recipient and multiple vehicles, it would be trivial
(catalog merge). If I had multiple recipients with one vehicle, it would be
trivial (mail merge). Is there a way to combine the two? I.e. multiple
recipients, each with their own catalog. Is this a feature of Publisher, is
there a hacky way to solve this problem, could I solve the problem
programatically (I'm a programmer first and foremost) or am I asking too much
of the software?
One option would be to have fields in the database for each potential
vehicle, say up to a maximum of 6, then for any field(vehicle) that is not
needed, store an empty string. Then I could get away with a conventional mail
merge. However, I would like to have non-text items for each of the repeated
questions, and do not want to show these if that question does not need to be
asked.
I would greatly appreciate any assistance. I think the catalog merge feature
is neat, and hope that I can use it in my projects.
Thanks!