Word mail merge with variable length table.

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Hi
Please forgive me any mistakes in posting, this is the first time I have joined a forum
Problem – Word mail merge (2003, 2007 or 2010, I don’t mind)
I have a standard mail merge letter with variable customer details and a table of stock items.
Table is 7 columns by 250 rows, data is tab delimited text file.
Table floats across as many pages as required dictated by amount of data within each cell.
But, if the customer only has a few stock items, the rest of the table is printing out giving several blank pages.
I have set ‘suppress blank lines’ in the merge, and ‘hidden’ the paragraph mark that appears after the table and the table has no borders showing.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
KiriCat

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Please specify which Version of Word you are using. The directions may differ depending on the version.

You may want to look at http://www.gmayor.com/ManyToOne.htm

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A few more thoughts. When you are doing a mail merge, unless you have IF statements surrounding your base text (testing for the condition or a merge variable), your final merge is never going to be shorter that your main merge document. This is especially true if you have a table structure in there. If you have 250 rows in your main merge document, you would have to do something pretty fancy to get a merge result with fewer.

I wouldn’t know how to take rows out of a table in a merge. I could take out an entire table, but not individual rows. Suppress blank lines just isn’t going to assist with this.

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You can use Word’s Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge facility for this (the terminology depends on the Word version). To see how to do so with any mailmerge data source supported by Word, check out my Microsoft Word Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge Tutorial:
http://lounge.windowssecrets.com/index.php?showtopic=731107

The tutorial covers everything from list creation to the insertion & calculation of values in multi-record tables in letters. Do read the tutorial before trying to use the mailmerge document included with it.

For some recent, worked examples, see the attachment to the posts at:
http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/9180-mail-merge-duplicate-names-but-different-dollar.html#post23345
http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/11436-access-word-creating-list-multiple-records.html#post30327

Alternatively, you may want to try a Many-to-One Mail Merge add-in from either:
• Graham Mayor at: http://www.gmayor.com/ManyToOne.htm
• Doug Robbins’ Windows Live SkyDrive page at: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=5aedcb43615e886b#cid=5AEDCB43615E886B&id=5AEDCB43615E886B%21111

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Charles
I can run 2003 or 2010, so it really doesn’t matter, although I am still trying to find things in 2010!
KiriCat

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Thanks Paul
I will work through your suggestion
I have no problem setting up the document & table, but will your suggestion suppress blank rows at the end of the table so that I don’t get empty pages.
Cheers KiriCat

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Hi KiriCat,

With the approach taken in my tutorial, your mailmerge main document will only have one ‘data’ row for the table. The mailmerge process then adds whetever rows are needed for the particular customer.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Ah!
Sounds good, will get to work
Cheers KiriCat

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