[DaveyO]

Hi,

I have MS OfficeXP with Excel 2002 and Word 2002 running on WinXP OS.

I have an Excel Spreadsheet with 1,400 records and I want to merge this into a Word 2002 document. My goal is to create a vertical listing of companies. Each row in the Excel file consists of a company name, address, phone, etc.

I used the Mail Merge Toolbar to select the data file, then I have to select Recipients. There are no Recipients, I just want to create a directory listing like so:

Company 1
Address
City, State, ZIP
Phone
Fax
Website

Then this repeats down the page for each company.

Since there are no recipients, I just skip this step and go on to inserting the Merge fields into the document. When I view the preview, all the records show up one-after-another just fine.

However, when I click the merge button, Word just goes to a blank white screen and hangs.

I've tried repeating this scenario with a Excel data file of just 40 records and it still hangs.

I then repeated the setup again, but this time I clicked the Recipients button on the Merge Toolbar and I see it has selected all the records in the Excel datafile as the Recipients...but again, there are no recipients. I cleared all the tick marks and proceeded to inserting my Merge fields in the document. When I went to the preview, nothing shows up...aha! So, even if I skip the Recipients button, it just selects all the records in my Excel data file by default.

Okay, I'm totally dense, I'm sure, but why can't I just create a document that merges my data from the Excel data file without it hanging? Am I doing something terribly wrong? This whole Recipients thing seems so counter-intuitive for just merging data into a document that isn't being sent out like some mail merge letter.

Can anyone shed some light on this? If you need more info, just let me know.



P.S. I searched the word "Merge" in this forum for a previous solution, but couldn't find one.

[Advertisements]

Well, I know I only posted the above questions an hour or so ago, but I had been trying to solve the problem for two full days.

I finally got fed up and just took all the Excel spreadsheet data and converted it into a MySQL database file. I then searched the web for a suitable PHP script and found a decent example script from an online tutorial right away. Bing, bang, boom! I had my data properly formatted and displaying correctly, with even empty fields surpressed, in about 3 minutes.

Why I tried to do this in MS Office, I'll never know, but hey...sometimes one forgets how painful a past relationship actually was. You just have to spend a few hours with the old partner to realize why you left in the first place

[DaveyO]

Well, I know I only posted the above questions an hour or so ago, but I had been trying to solve the problem for two full days.

I finally got fed up and just took all the Excel spreadsheet data and converted it into a MySQL database file. I then searched the web for a suitable PHP script and found a decent example script from an online tutorial right away. Bing, bang, boom! I had my data properly formatted and displaying correctly, with even empty fields surpressed, in about 3 minutes.

Why I tried to do this in MS Office, I'll never know, but hey...sometimes one forgets how painful a past relationship actually was. You just have to spend a few hours with the old partner to realize why you left in the first place