Exporting specific field from word mail merge to excel

[edwards438]

I have a Microsoft word mail merge with around 11 fields, I wish to export 2 specific fields into an excel spreadsheet, is this possible and how would I go about doing this?


I use Windows 7, Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Excel 2007
Please assume I have very basic skills in relation to these programes, so may need to be spoon fed a lot of the information

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

 

[WendyM]

Hi, welcome to TSG.

Can you explain your request a little more? Are you wanting to complete the Word mail merge and then export the results of the mail merge into Excel for two of the fields? What is your mail merge source?

 

[edwards438]

I have attached said merge document and the source is the ltdor document, it's merely company name/ address ect. Ideally yes, I would like to complete the merge then export two of the specific fields which have been filled in to an excel document, it's essentially so I can keep a list of the companies to which I have sent letters. I have been unable to find a way to export specific fields short of manually copying them.

EDIT: I should probably clarify that although there are 2 entries in the merge source, the usual version I use is entirely blank and is never saved when I add to the recipient fields within the main mail merge document.

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

 

[WendyM]

So to make sure I understand, the LTODR document is usually blank, and then you fill it in, merge, and then don't save LTODR?

It seems to me that it would be easier to save the information from LTODR rather than saving the fields from the merge document. Is there a reason why you can't just save the source, rather than merging it and then exporting the fields?

 

[edwards438]

I probably should've spent a bit longer on my explanation; the "ltodr" is never opened, recipients are added to the "merge document" (by staff members) which in turn fills in the ltodr. The staff members do not have direct access to the ltodr, so therefore can only change information in the ltodr via adding recipients in the merge mail, they therefore cannot see the ltodr in order to save the information from it.

After recipients are added in "merge document" (simultaneously filling in the blank ltodr) the ltodr is not saved, so next time the merge document is opened there are no pre-existing recipients within it. It's a really confusing system I know, but unfortunately one with which my predecessor left me.

Thanks for your help, I hope my explanation made sense, as I said, i'm relatively new to this and trying to get my head round it myself!

 

[WendyM]

Oh boy, now I'm even more confused!

From opening your documents, it looks like Merge document pulls information from LTDOR, which makes sense. But you're saying the opposite is happening, and Merge document pushes information to LTDOR, is that correct? If so, then how do the staff enter information into the Merge document? They type it manually? To do that, they'd have to overwrite the merge fields. Or do they merge the data from a different source?

 

[edwards438]

Yeah it is very confusing, especially for a novice like me!

Within the "merge document", staff members go to: Mailings (in the ribbon), then Edit Recipient List, then they click the data source (ltodr), then they click edit, this brings up a box called "Data Form" within which they can *indirectly* edit the ltodr, without having direct access.

When the data form is filled in, this data is transferred into the ltodr from which the mail merge eventually draws the information to complete the merge (very convoluted I know), it is essentially the information from the Mail Merge Recipients fields (specifically "Company name" and "Post Code"), which I wish to export to an excel document, as I have said due to the somewhat lacking system i've been left with, these fields cannot be directly exported from the ltodr.

As I said, due to the way the system is set up the ltodr is then never saved with the information which has been input into "merge document".

 

[WendyM]

Ah, thank you, now I get it. The problem is that once the merge is complete, the merge fields aren't fields anymore - they're just text and there's nothing to distinguish them from any other text in the document. If they had a different format (italic, for example) there would be a trigger to tell a macro what to look for. But I'm not sure how to do it when there's just a line or two of text that needs to be copied from each page. There might be a way to do it based on the line position, since that should be the same in every document, but I'm not familiar with it. Hopefully someone smarter than me will come along!