Mail Merge Envelope Inquiry

[Guest]

Hi,

I have about 50 names and addresses in a word document line by line, with
each name/address for each person separated by one space (enter).

I would like to simply put in 50 envelopes and have it print the recipients
names and my return address. Is this possible since this list is not in an
outlook file or a database, or a spreadsheet, etc?

What woudl be the simpliest way of doing this?

Thanks so much!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You'll have to do at least some minimal formatting to convert your list to a
mail merge data source. If you replace the spaces between fields with tabs,
then you can use Table | Convert | Text to Table and use the resulting table
as a data source.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

You'll have to do at least some minimal formatting to convert your list to a
mail merge data source. If you replace the spaces between fields with tabs,
then you can use Table | Convert | Text to Table and use the resulting table
as a data source.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Just a follow up question. When you say replace the line spaces into tabs,
do you mean this would now read horizontally, rather than verically?

i.e. John Doe 123 Elm Street Denver, CO 48375


Also, do I need to tab between the first and last name so it goes into its
own table when converted, as well as city then tab then state)? Or will
comma be good?


Thanks so much

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I missed the "Enter" description of "space." Yes, you could replace the
paragraph marks with tabs, or you could just convert to a table separating
at paragraph marks. For either to work, however, you have to have the same
number of lines in each address block, and you need to tell Word to make a
table with that number of columns. No matter how you do it, the object is to
get each "record" (address) into a single table row, with one column for
each merge field.

Given the way you're going to use the addresses, you could equally well use
a single-column table (with one address block per row) as your data source,
but creating that table might be a bit more problematic. Separating the
addresses into fields gives you more flexibility, anyway, especially if you
separate out the ZIP codes and last names so that you can sort on them if
desired. Whether this is worth the trouble or not depends on whether or not
you'll be reusing the data source for labels, address lists, etc.

One more thing, if you're lucky enough to have an empty paragraph (blank
line) between address blocks, then you can easily create the single-column
table. Just replace ^p (a paragraph break) with ^l (lowercase L, a line
break), then replace ^l^l (two line breaks) with ^p. This gives you each
address block in a single paragraph, and you can easily convert to a table
separating at paragraph marks.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Yes, mit will work as you have shown it - but see
http://www.gmayor.com/convert_labels_into_mail_merge.htm as Word is happiest
with tables as data sources, and if you need an envelope template to create
an envelope source document for this merge, you can download one from my web
site.

http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm will help with the
mechanics of the merge.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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