Publish Directory, Data from Access

[Mary T]

I am preparing our neighborhood directory, hoping to use Publisher instead of
cutting and pasting documents from Access, Excel, and Word. I have Office
2007 Pro. The data itself requires an Access report of 70 pages. Not all
data fields resist for all residents (some are null). The report requires a
subreport listing the children if they exist.

I tried to export the report from Access to an Adobe Acrobat 7 document
(standard in Office 2007) and import it as an object in Publisher. I get the
1st page, but cannot get it to flow through to additional pages. Exporting
one page at a time from Access and then importing one page at a time into
Publisher for 70 pages seems a bit time consuming.

I tried using catalog merge. The merge works except for 2 things:
1. I cannot get the children (the equivalent of a sub report).
2. I cannot make a merge field shrink it the contents are null or make a
merge field grow if the data takes more than one line.

Am I using the right software? I have never used Publisher before, and have
been teaching myself. Hopefully, I just missed something and there is an
easy answer.

 

[Charles W Davis]

Mary,

Publisher and Access is the correct combination. Forget Adobe Acrobat.

Go to Publisher Help. Search for "catalog merge" (without the quotes).
Scroll down to "Insert merge fields into a catalog merge publication. When
preparing the merge there should be an option to ignore null fields (I
haven't looked at it for a while)

Good luck... It takes a few times to get it right.

 

[Mary T]

Thanks Charles,

I have just found the option I think you were talking about. At the top of
each field in the source description there is an arrow with a drop-down menu.
One of the choices is "Nonblanks". What it does is filter out any row with
a blank in that field, not just shrink the field so it takes no space. Did I
miss something else?
I tried "Auto-fit" on the text in the text box for the merged field, but it
didn't work.

 

[Charles W Davis]

Mary T,

My last experience was a couple of years ago. I never attempted an
"Auto-fit" routine, but did have much smaller font for selected insertions.

Click on Publisher's Help and search for "auto fit" (without the blanks).
Expand and read both "Fit text automatically" and "Fit text manually"

Best of luck to you! I'm out of ideas.

Thanks Charles,

I have just found the option I think you were talking about. At the top
of
each field in the source description there is an arrow with a drop-down
menu.
One of the choices is "Nonblanks". What it does is filter out any row
with
a blank in that field, not just shrink the field so it takes no space.
Did I
miss something else?
I tried "Auto-fit" on the text in the text box for the merged field, but
it
didn't work.

 

[Brucels]

Mary,

I have had great success in setting up a directory for a 400-member
organization as an Access report. If you would like to see a few pages of it,
send me a message:
brucels AT roadrunner DOT com.

Bruce

 

[Mary T]

Bruce,

Did you print your Access report so that it created a booklet 8.5" X 5 "? I
have done this twice before using Access, but the pages have to be cut and
pasted together in the correct order - very time consuming.

 

[Mary Sauer]

I have made numerous directories using Access and Publisher's catalog merge.
I've never had to cut and paste. Are you using 2003? How are you setting up the
pages?

 

[Brucels]

Mary,

I must admit that the furthest I go is printing to a PDF in landscape
orientation for electronic distribution. The PDF is also used to create a
printed directory. However, I do not handle the layout process, so I can't
speak to it.

 

[Mary T]

Mary, I'm trying to avoid cutting and pasting. There would not be a problem
if our directory were 8.5" X 11". The problem is because it is 5.5" X 8".
For final printing, 2 pages must be side by side on a letter size paper, but
the page numbers are not continuous except for the middle page.

Publisher (2007) does this automatically, and if I were just printing name,
address, and phone number, I would have finished the catalog merge.
Unfortunately, I am printing occupations and employers for everyone in the
house as well as printing a list of children with birthdates. Since these
fields are null for many residents, they create a great deal of empty space
in the directory.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Have you looked at the articles concerning catalog merge on the Office web site?
You can put many different fields in a directory merge.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/CH010504381033.aspx
There is a demo here as well as help and troubleshooting.

 

[Sagit]

I'm not sure my first reply went thru, so here it is again. I create a
directory using Word Mail Merge and Publisher. Word 2000 and Word 2003 have
a directory option in the Mail Merge. Once the merge is completed, it results
in one long list of names. Word automatically omits any null fields in
Access.

I then create a Publisher booklet (size 8.5 x 5.5) with the number of pages
I think I will need. Each page has a blank text box with Autoflow, which
means that once the first page is filled up, Publisher will automatically go
to the next page, and so on. I go back to my Word directory, click on Edit,
Select All, Copy. Then I go back to my Publisher booklet, click at the top
of the first blank page, hit Edit, Paste. The names and addresses, etc. will
automatically flow from the first page thru the last. It's fun to watch. I
haven't experimented with Word to see if it expands a merge field if the data
takes more than one line. Hope this helps!