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  #1  
Old 10-08-2014, 08:55 PM
lawlaw lawlaw is offline Learning Mail Merge Rules Windows 7 64bit Learning Mail Merge Rules Office 2007
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Is there a book out there that will give me a comprehensive look at mail merge rules and how to use them? I am finding books on VBA in Microsoft Word but also want to learn everything I can in using the merge rules in documents. I know the basics "IF...THEN...ELSE" but want to dive deeper into all the rules. Please suggest a resource or book that I can learn from. Thanks
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  #2  
Old 10-09-2014, 02:29 AM
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macropod macropod is online now Learning Mail Merge Rules Windows 7 64bit Learning Mail Merge Rules Office 2010 32bit
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There's a lot of useful stuff in the Mailmerge Tips & Tricks 'Sticky' thread at this forum's top:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...ps-tricks.html
A lot of that material is unlikely to be in any book you could buy - and here 'tis for FREE!

Beyond that, if you're interested in:
Date Calculations:
check out my Microsoft Word Date Calculation Tutorial, at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...ation-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm#Third_party
Although not written specifically for mailmerges, the field codes there are readily adapted to that purpose.


Word Field Maths:
check out my Microsoft Word Field Maths Tutorial, at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...Maths-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm#Third_party
Although not written specifically for mailmerges, the field codes there are readily adapted to that purpose.


Catalogue/Directory Mailmerges:
check out my Microsoft Word Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge Tutorial at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...merge-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/Zips/Catalogue%20Mailmerge.zip

The tutorial covers everything from list creation to the insertion & calculation of values in multi-record tables in letters. Do read the tutorial before trying to use the mailmerge document included with it.


For some worked examples, see the attachments to the posts at:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...html#post23345
https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...html#post30327
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...l=1#post928391

As the foregoing will show, the scope for what can be done in a mailmerge is quite extensive. Beyond what you'll read in those resources, though, still quite a lot more to learn and a lot of what can be achieved depends on using both your knowledge and imagination.
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Old 10-09-2014, 06:07 PM
lawlaw lawlaw is offline Learning Mail Merge Rules Windows 7 64bit Learning Mail Merge Rules Office 2007
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Thank you as always Macropod. I have a couple other questions:

1) I'm an attorney and use merging to take my client's data and merge it into forms that I file with the Court. My current issue is that my practice management software only allows me a limited number of fields that are available to merge into word documents. All the other data must be manually entered into the document after the merge, and I am trying to automate as much as possible. I've been trying to think of ways to get more fields and my idea is to put all my client's data into a PDF file, then export the field data into a TXT, then to a CSV, and then the CSV data is used with my Merge templates. This would allow me to have unlimited about of data fields.

The problem is that getting the data from the PDF and into my Word merge templates is a bit tedious since there are multiple steps.

A) Do you know of a way to go from Adobe Acrobat directly to a Word Merge? This would be taking the data from the PDF and using it in the merge directly. I searched online for programs but could not find.

B) In your experience is my method a good idea, or are there better more efficient ways to achieve what I am going for?

2) The Courts here use Microsoft Excel for child support calculations, but they have programmed it so that it automatically creates multiple documents in other sheets in Excel with the date you input. I've been considering this as an alternative to what I am trying to achieve. Are you familiar with this and would this be a better option? My only problem with this is that I already have 100s of merge templates in Word and dont want to recreate all of them.

3) Where did you learn all this stuff? Seems like there is not a lot of information (beyond your tutorials) on advanced word merging.

Thanks~!
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Old 10-09-2014, 06:16 PM
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Re 1:
Your description suggests some data are available from your practice management software, and other data are somewhere else. If so, the best approach might be to export the data from the practice management software to a CSV file that you can then load into, say Excel and combine it there with your other data before doing the merge.

A word mailmerge can't use a PDF as a data source and, although automating Adobe Acrobat (you need the Pro version) isn't all that difficult, extract precisely the data you want could be a challenge.

Re 2:
I have no knowledge of the Excel system to which you refer, so I can't advise on that front.

Re 3:
It's all self-taught. I'm something of a pioneer in the field (no pun intended).
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Old 10-10-2014, 11:23 AM
lawlaw lawlaw is offline Learning Mail Merge Rules Windows 7 64bit Learning Mail Merge Rules Office 2007
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Another question. Thanks again Macropod!

1) Is there a way to have one data set, and then choose to produce several different merged documents from several different templates? For example, to file for divorce there are about 7 documents to file with the Court. I want them all produced at the same time coming from the same excel data set. Is there a way to do this, or do I need to merge all 7 documents individually?
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Old 10-10-2014, 01:04 PM
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The same data set can be used for multiple different mailmerges. So, you could have a separate mailmerge main document for each case type. And you could have separate mailmerge main documents for each of the documents a given case type might require.

With letter merges, however, it's easy enough for a given mailmerge main document to incorporate all the document types you need for the corresponding case.

Where different case types use the same stationery, you might even have just the one copy of that stationery (easier to maintain), together the any required mergefields, and use INCLUDETEXT fields to import it into the others.
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Old 11-01-2014, 02:43 PM
lawlaw lawlaw is offline Learning Mail Merge Rules Windows 7 64bit Learning Mail Merge Rules Office 2007
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Say for example I can only merge one field into a document. Is there a way to have Word search the contents of that field and then display only certain information from that field, instead of just displaying the entire field?
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Old 11-01-2014, 08:51 PM
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A mergefield only outputs the entire information for the corresponding field in the datasource. Any parsing would have to be done via additional field coding. For numeric data and dates, that's not too hard (the links I've already posted employ such techniques). For text, however, every character in the output would have to be tested. Depending on the data, that could mean 100+ tests per character - hardly a practical proposition.

You can also combine mergefields with other fields to conditionally vary the output. An IF field, for example, might be used to test whether a given mergefield consists of, starts with, or ends with, a particular string and vary the output accordingly. The 'Mailmerge Tips & Tricks' sticky thread (https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...ps-tricks.html) has various examples of such testing.
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