columns to tables to excel

C

csapple

I scanned a three column document to Word. 13 pages. The text consists
of multiple addresses. There are approximately 250 addresses. I would
like to print labels of the addresses. Is there a way for me to to
enter this info into Excel to set up a mail merge without having to
edit each of the aderess individually?
 
D

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

See response in microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields newsgroup.

Please do not post the same message separately to multiple newsgroups.

--
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
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Table columns or newspaper-style columns? If the former, see
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/ConvertAdrsToDatafile.htm (and note
that you don't have to put them in Excel; a Word table will work just as
well).

If the latter, first convert the document to a single column. The
information in the above-referenced article will start being helpful at this
point. If you're lucky, you'll either have every address in a single
paragraph OR have a paragraph break at the end of each line and an empty
paragraph between address blocks. If that is the case, you can use the
following procedure to get the data into a table:

1. Replace paragraph breaks with line breaks: In the Replace dialog, type ^p
in the "Find what" box and ^l (that's a lowercase L) in the "Replace with"
box and Replace All.

2. Then replace two line breaks (^l^l) with a paragraph break (^p). This
will put each address block in a single paragraph.

3. Now, at minimum, replace each line break (^l) with a tab character (^t).
You may also want to insert tabs between first and last names, city and
state, etc., to further break up the information.

4. Table | Convert | Text to Table, separating at tabs.
 
J

Jay Freedman

It depends very much on how the addresses are laid out on the page,
and what character(s) separate the parts of each address. Most
scanner/OCR setups are very stupid about this, which leaves you with
lots of manual cleanup to do.

Read through http://www.gmayor.com/convert_labels_into_mail_merge.htm.
If you still have trouble seeing how to do what's necessary, post back
and include a small section of the text with at least two complete
consecutive addresses; and describe what you see when you turn on
nonprinting characters by clicking the ¶ button
(http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm). Are
there tab characters or spaces between items? Are there paragraph
marks or line breaks? Are the addresses separated by one paragraph
mark, two, or more? With information like that, we can write a macro
to reformat all the addresses.

Excel can import a text file in which the parts are separated by
spaces, as long as the parts in each address start in the same column.
The import wizard shows a section of the text and lets you indicate
the start of each part.

On the other hand, you can use a Word document as a mail merge source,
without having to take the data into Excel.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
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