Mail Merge filtering (Word 2000)

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I have an excel spreadsheet with a lot of information (names, addresses, etc.) which I want to use for a mail merge. However, this month I may need only 10 of the addresses – next month maybe more or less – and some of them the same as the previous month. How can I select which records will print on the letter without deleting the others? I’ve tried the filter, but there are people in California who need the letter and some in California who don’t. Going through the datasource filter seems to delete the record completely from the file. Not something I want to do…

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Hi Deborah:
What criteria do you use to select the record? In order for Word to limit the records to less than all, it must use some filtering rule. If your selection is based on criteria that aren’t in the database (e.g. who did I talk to on the phone last week?), Word has no way of knowing.

You can set up a field in Excel & manually add a code to it. Then you could instruct Word to filter just those whose field value matches that code.

The filter doesn’t delete a record from the datasource. It just sets up an instruction to merge records that match the criteria. After you finish the merge, you can change the filter again. Or, you can set up several main documents, each using the same datasource, but with different criteria.
Hope this helps.

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Phil:

A brilliant, and easy, suggestion! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself (probably because I’m just back from vacation – body is back, mind isn’t)

Thanks again!

Debbie

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