forcing a page break in a mail merge directory

[~~Alan~~]

Office Suite XP
Data in Excel

I am creating a directory/catalog using Excel as my database. My data is
sorted in alphabetical order, and my output is just the way I want it.

What I would like to do is to force a page break when the first letter of a
specific field changes. How can I accomplish this.

I do not know any programming languages.

Thank you,
~Alan

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Hi Alan,

If you have created the Directory in the form of a table, and the field
containing the letter is in the first column of the table, the following
macro should do what you want:

' Throw Away Macro created by Doug Robbins
'
Dim source As Document, scat As Range, stab As Table, i As Long, Init As
String
Set source = ActiveDocument
Set stab = source.Tables(1)
Set scat = stab.Cell(1, 1).Range
scat.End = scat.Start + 1
Init = scat.Text
For i = 1 To stab.Rows.Count
Set scat = stab.Cell(i, 1).Range
scat.End = scat.Start + 1
If scat <> Init Then
scat.ParagraphFormat.PageBreakBefore
Init = scat.Text
End If
Next i

If you did not create the directory as a table, it's easy enough to do, as
all you have to do is insert one row table in the mailmerge main document
and insert the mergefields into the cells of that one row table. Do not and
anything after the table. Then when the merge is executed, a row will be
created in the table for every record in the datasource.

To see how to make use of the above macro, see the article “What do I do
with macros sent to me by other newsgroup readers
to help me out?” at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/CreateAMacro.htm


--
Please 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

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi ~~Alan~~,

An alternate method to the macro that Doug proposes would be to use a
(relatively complex) set of nested fields. Normally, this approach is used to
create one-to-many lists, but it can be applied just as well to what you want
to do. See, for example, the KB article

http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=211303

I am creating a directory/catalog using Excel as my database. My data is
sorted in alphabetical order, and my output is just the way I want it.

What I would like to do is to force a page break when the first letter of a
specific field changes. How can I accomplish this.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[~~Alan~~]

Thank you, I will give these a try.

Also, is there a way to keep a record from being broken between pages?

~Alan

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Try applying the paragraph formatting "Keep lines together" attribute to the
paragraph containing the merge fields in the main document.

--
Please 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