Mailmerge a list

[David Fulford-Brown]

Hi All!

I'd apreciate some help with a mailmerge problem.

At the moment I've got a plain Word document listing a board of
directors. It is an old document that was designed as a couple of
columns. At the top of the page we have the company logo. Then the
list starts top left with the Chairman, deputy chairman etc., This
continues on to list the rest of the boar members on the right hand
side of the page. Each entry has

Person's Name - Position on the Board (unless just a member)
Job title
Company
Phone Number
Email

After the people who have defined positions on the board (chairman,
deputy, treasurer), the rest of the members (typically on the right
hand side of the page) are listed alphabetically.

My question is: I have this information as part of a database. So how
would I go about turning out a merged document that looks like the
original format but which automatically alters as board members leave
or join?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers
David

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Whatever you do, I think you would at least have to have a column which
shows the report sequence of the people with positions on the board.

To do this using merge, you really need
a. a single sort sequence that sorts the board people into the correct
sequence of seniority (or whatever it is) and the non-board people into
alpha sequence
b. an indication of where the board members stop and the non-board people
begin, so you can insert a column break
c. (probably) a two-column section layout in Word.

I would suggest that you
a. add a column called e.g. boardsequence and assign 1,2,3,4 etc. to the
board members in the sequence you need on the report. Assign 100 to the last
board member to be listed (I don't like this much, but it is probably the
easiest way to make this work in Word. Assign 1000 to everyone without a
board position. Or if you don't want a new column, create a new table with
boardposition boardsequence
Chairman 1
Deputy 2
Treasurer 3
Lastboardmember 100
<blank> 1000

Then create an Access query that sorts on boardsequence, name. If you use
the boardposition/boardsequence lookup table you'll need to join you main
table and the lookup table.

Then in Word, set up a Catalog/Directory merge that lists the details you
need, and has an IF field at the end which says

{ IF { MERGEFIELD boardsequence } = 100
"<column break>" "" }

where you put an actual column break in instead of <column break>