What has MS done to Mail Merge in XP?

[HFChristie]

What the heck?

Mail merge used to be so easy (Office 2000 and older). Click on merge utility, openned a smaller window where you could pick the source, range, and specify a query.

Now, however, this is not (apparently) possible. I was able to specify a source and range, and even setup the label itself (although that was 100 times more complicated than Office 2000).

Now, however, I can't see where I can add a query to the labels I want to include.

How do I tell it to only include entries that match a specific criteria?

Thanks in advance.

 

[daveod]

Hello HFChristie

I'm assuming you're using the Mail Merge wizard in Word 2002 and have got your source data in Access or Excel.

If it's Access, run a Make Table query to generate a filtered list from your database to use in Step 3, 'Select recipients'.

If it's Excel, add one or more criterion columns to your source table then use the drop-down selectors in the Mail Merge Recipients window.

And yes, setting up labels is clunky but once you've done it save the code sheet (the one with the chevron markings) and use this through the 'Start from existing document' option in Step 2, 'Select starting document'.

Regards
Dave

 

[HFChristie]

Yeah, I guess Office XP is the same as Office 2002. And, I'm attaching to an Access 2000 DB for my data.

I loath creating multiple views of tables - it gets to be a real mess trying to pick names, etc.

Office 2000 didn't need it. It allowed you to enter the query as part of the link between the DB and the table.

XP has some nice features, but it's changes like this and how it changes email signatures that sorely temp me to return to 2000.

Thanks