Mailmerge - Group Contributions by Donor

[dougdevoe]

Macropod - I'm convinced that you can help me create a mail merge to showcase contributions by members. I have a excel worksheet with the following headings (Name, Address, City, State, Zip, Date, Contribution Type, Amount). I would like for ALL donations to be grouped by user and have all of their donations on one sheet and then the next user on the next sheet. Can you please help me? I need to get this done for my church ASAP. I appreciate your help.

Sincerely,
Doug

[macropod]

Hi Doug,

Post #13 in this thread (https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...html#post23345) shows how to do the setup. For another worked example, see:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...html#post30327

[dougdevoe]

Hi Paul:

Yes, I agree that should point me in the right direction for this, but when I open up WSM_Donation Acknowledgement Mailmerge.doc, I can not see the actual code that shows the fields that I can adjust for my data feed. I simply get a page that is already rendered with the data from your sample data file even if I try to toggle between "Preview Results". I'm using Word 2010 if this makes a difference.

Thanks for assisting me with this. I look forward to hearing from you and determining what I need to do to use my data source and modify the page layout.

Thanks,
Doug

[macropod]

Post #2 in the same thread also points you to the tutorial on which all this is based. Have you read that? If so, you should have seen that revealing the field codes requires nothing more than pressing Alt-F9 - the same as with any Word document.

[dougdevoe]

Paul: Thank you for that reminder. While I'm very profecient in many areas of Excel and SQL etc., I must admit that I've never dealt with Mail Merge. I have made changes to the data file and the document fields, however, each contribution is showing up on a seperate page. Any ideas why this is happening?

[macropod]

That suggests you're using a Letter merge, whereas a Directory merge is required.

[dougdevoe]

Bingo!!!! I had simply copied your document and renamed it and didn't think about checking that since it was a copy. I made the switch and everything is grouping correctly. I now can spend the next couple of days formating the document. Thank you for your help and hopefully I won't have to bother you again. Thanks again for your quick replies ... your dedication is appreciated.

[dougdevoe]

Paul: I think I'm almost done in getting my report formated the way that I want it. However, I was hoping that you could show me how to get my grouped data into either a table or simply adding a third column (ContributionType). Using your sample code, can you please show me how I can layout my data with DATE, CONTRIBUTION TYPE and AMOUNT? If you can show how to lay this out in a table would be a plus but not critical.

I appreciate your help.

Doug

[macropod]

Achieving a tabular layout (as distinct from a table), is more clearly demonstrated in the 2nd link in post #2 above.

As discussed in the tutorial (see 'Merging to Tables'), the process can be adapted to producing actual tables. When you do that, though, each row ends up being a table in its own right. You can then run the tutorial's TableJoiner macro to merge each set into a single table.

There is another approach that could be used for creating actual tables, via a DATABASE field, but that adds yet another layer of complexity (the DATABASE field requires its own SQL statement, plus field switches to define the table format) and most users have more than enough trouble just getting their heads around the existing field codes.