Excel "Newline" question (Also deals with Mail Merge)

[Kalechibki]

Hey all

While working on a form letter that is generated after a user performs many calculations (Excel -> Word), I encountered slight problem. What happened was I needed more merged areas than Word wanted to create in a header (After starting the initial header, I was going into the file and kept adding columns, until it stopped letting me). Well, the easiest thing to change was to combine some of the address fields (if a person has a multiple line street address, like:

Mary Jane Doe
123 Main St
Apt 4
Albany, NY 12203

the street address could be concatenated together) in Excel, and then brought to Word.

So, now I'm trying to make Excel see this as two seperate lines, so that Word reads the cell, and displays the address as two lines(right now, it reads the address above as:

Mary Jane Doe
123 Main St Apt 4
Albany, NY 12203

). So I was wondering if anyone knows how do to that?

I'm working with Excel 2000.

Thanks for any help you can provide

 

[lhite]

It seems to me that the easiest thing to do would be to use the Excel file as the Data Source for the Word Mail Merge (rather than converting the Excel file to Word first).

If you absolutely must do it as described, make sure the cell in the Excel file is set to WRAP (under FORMAT, CELLS, ALIGNMENT in Excel97). Then, when entering your data press ALT+ENTER to move to the next line of text within the same cell.

-Larry

 

[Kalechibki]

Gack!!

I guess I didn't describe what I meant correctly. I AM using the Word Mail merge - and the header for that wouldn't let me create more columns. That is why I'm combined the address fields and trying to find a way to insert a newline character

Brian

 

[lhite]

I'm not sure I'm understanding you. In a Mail Merge you can create a data file in Word. Word puts the data into a table, and has a maximum of 63 or 64 columns for fields (at least in Word97). Another option is to run the Mail Merge with an Excel file as the Data Source (which allows 256 columns). Using Excel would eliminate the need for you to combine cells.

-Larry

 

[GinaPhx]

Hi,
I think we are having somewhat the same problem as Kalechibki, we are trying to figure out how to do this (Excel XP/Word XP). The address field in Excel is located in one column/field. If the address had more than one line, we used <alt><enter> and entered the second address line. When we used mail merge from Word XP, it moved the second address line to the end of the first address line and puts a ascii character in between (I think it's alt 215. In Word XP it shows the ascii character.)

So in Word, after the merge it's doing:

Mary Jane Doe
123 Main St Apt 4
Albany, NY 12203

We want it to do:

Mary Jane Doe
123 Main St
Apt 4
Albany, NY 12203

Is this what you want Kalechibki?
Thanks for any help