Dear Fount of All Knowledge,

I have created an "Employee Demographic Form" in MS Word using the
"insert a table" function.  I have hidden the lines and borders,
edited the fonts and settings to design a nice looking form in which I
can tab from cell to cell to type in information for each person.

I need to generate a form for each of our 120 employees as a cover
sheet for their personnel file. However, I do not want to type in 120
pages of information! At the same time, I have all the information
that I need to go in the beautiful looking Demographic Forms stored in
an ugly Excel spreadsheet.

For Example: In Excel

Joe Adkins is row one - last name = cell 1A; first name = cell 1B;
street address = cell 1C; rate of pay = cell 1Q.

Carol Bell is row two - last name = cell 2A; first name = cell 2B;
street address = cell 2C; date hired = 2F.

How do I assign these Excel cell coordinates to the specific cells in
in my Word table (form)and then link the programs so that I can use
Word to
print out 120 Employee Demographic Forms - each form based upon each
row (one employee) in my Excel spreadsheet?

Thank you so much!

Hi sobelle-ga,

The process you are describing is called a "mail merge" in MS Office
terms, but it is capable of doing much more than mail-related tasks.
Essentially any situation where you want to use data to generate
customized versions of a document can benefit from the mail merge.
There are three main steps to performing this task:

1. Create a Data File in Excel

2. Create a Form Letter in Word

3. Merge the Files 

There is actually a live tutorial available which goes through the
steps of creating a mail merge document at the MIStupid.com online
magazine:

http://mistupid.com/technical/mailmerge/

This tutorial will walk you through each of the main steps...of course
you will need to change it slightly to meet your criteria. The only
essential difference is that you will need to place your fields inside
the individual cells of the table such that the correct information
for each employee can be displayed.

It's worth noting that the version of Office has a slight impact on
the interface for the mail merge process (the above tutorial is for
Office 2000 however it still valuable for learning the steps, which
are essentially unchanged).

If you have Office XP (2002), you can access the Mail Merge Wizard
via:
Tools drop down menu > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge Wizard

A panel will pop up on the right of your Word window and will guide
you through the steps required to complete the mail merge. You will
need to have the document containing your table already open so that
you can create the mail merge on that document (current document
option). The type of mail merge you will need to select is "form
letter" from the provided options. The rest of the process will allow
you to define a data source, insert fields, preview the merge, and
finally complete the merge.

A detailed walkthrough of the process in Office XP is available at:
http://www.sandiego.edu/ittraining/docs/Mail-Merge-xp.pdf


If you have any questions about the information above please post a
clarification and I will respond promptly :)

Cheers!

answerguru-ga

Dear AnswerGuru, Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!  I went right to
the resources you recommended, followed the procedures, easily adapted
them to my particular task, and all worked flawlessly!  You have saved
me MANY hours of work and I really appreciate the help!