How to Print the recipient list in the mail merge

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kathy Germolus
  • Start date Start date
K

Kathy Germolus

In Word 2002, how do you print a list of just the
recipients without printing the whole merged letter? In a
new merge, I am using a number of data lists from prior
merges and would like to compare the old data list to the
new recipient list and once compared, combine them into
one list.
 
I would print "print the list of recipients" one of 2
ways, depending...
1. If the data source documents are simple enough, then as
they are separate documents from main doc / letter, they
should themselves be printable. or ...
2. If the data source documents are not simple enough
either in number and length of fields or because they are
in some format like Access database or something, make
another main document that shows you just what you want to
see (like your letter but no text, just headings and the
critical fields you want) and merge that.
Otherwise, if what you are looking to do is compare some
large data sources, a programmer would be able to show you
how to automate the comparison rather than using eyeball
to compare printed lists.
In the case of Word doc data sources, the programmer could
do procedure 2. to each of new and old lists, but sort-
merge to text files, then run DOS comparison on the text
files > piped to text file, and print that for you.
In the case of databased data sources (like Access) the
programmer would use SQL to get you a result set of what's
not in common.
Just some ideas. Hope they help. I need help too. :)
 
Hmm, I see on re-reading that you'd actually like to
combine old and new data sources, probably dropping
duplicates or something.
If the data sources are Word docs, all alike, and there
are likely some but not a lot of duplicates, I might do
this....
Open a blank Word doc, and copy&paste each existing data
source into it, removing the duplicate headings as you go.
Then do a Data, Sort of that on recipient name, and scan
through and delete the duplicate lines.
But if these are large lists with lots of duplicate
problems, keeping your list in a database is going to make
it easier to update.
 
Hi Kathy,

Run the merge as usual but instead of choosing Form Letters
choose Catalog Merge. That's what it's called. If you're
going to compare one list against the other you'll probably
want to sort the datasources first, according to whatever
sort key you think will expose the duplicates most clearly.

However... if your lists are huge, this can still get pretty
tedious. Are you using Excel datasources, and are your lists
mostly different but with small amounts of overlap? If so,
I wrote an Excel macro a while ago to help the compare --
actually it doesn't compare lists, it flags likely duplicates
in a single combined list, so I put them together and sift
that. Just yell if you'd like to see that.
 
Note also that if you're using Word 2002, the Catalog merge is called
"Directory" (presumably because this more accurately reflects what most Word
users use it for).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
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