Group:  Microsoft Word ยป microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
Thread: Mail Merge Issue

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Mail Merge Issue
Dan S. <danUNDERscoreGOEShereSLAUGHTER[ at ]sbcglobal.net> 12/22/2008 4:48:03 AM
I'm merging data from a "lookup" column from Access. The number comes
up in the Word output instead of the adjecent text.

How do I make the text come up?

--
Yours,
Dan S.
la verdad es lo que es ($1)


Re: Mail Merge Issue
Peter Jamieson <pjj[ at ]KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> 12/22/2008 8:48:09 AM
If possible, try creating a query that includes the data from the table
and lookup table (with an explicit JOIN), and use that as the data source.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Dan S. wrote:
[Quoted Text]
> I'm merging data from a "lookup" column from Access. The number comes
> up in the Word output instead of the adjecent text.
>
> How do I make the text come up?
>
Re: Mail Merge Issue
Cindy M. <C.Meister-C[ at ]hispeed.ch> 12/22/2008 9:58:17 AM
Hi Dan,

[Quoted Text]
> I'm merging data from a "lookup" column from Access. The number comes
> up in the Word output instead of the adjecent text.
>
> How do I make the text come up?
>
<Sigh> the problems that making the database "user friendly" causes...

You may need to go to an Access newsgroup if you can't follow what I'm
going to tell you. A Word group isn't really the right place to go into
the basics of relational databases, and it's been a while since I had to
explain these.

Word's mail merge can link only to the underlying data in the database,
not to what the database UI is showing you. The "look-up" is a shortcut
Access has created for you, the human, to show you something you're more
likely to be able to relate to than an ID value. But this is not really
stored in the table to which Word is connecting.

What you need is a QUERY that does what Access is doing for you in the
background. Mail Merge can link to the query, instead of a table, and
pull in the information that way.

So, you go into the Query Designer and add the table you want to merge
to, plus the table(s) that contain the information the look-up is pulling
in. Since Access is able to do the look-up, all the links should come in
automatically. Then just pull the fields you need for the mail merge into
the Query grid (the "text" instead of the "ID", for example, from the
underlying table).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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