Creating a Directory with Word and Excel?

September 7, 2005 11:11 AM

Is there a quick way to create a mail merge directory in Word from an Excel spreadsheet, broken down by a specific field (department, category, etc.)? This seems like a Microsoft 101 question, but the built-in Help doesn't seem to address this specifically, and online help from Word 2002 gets into code I can't even begin to understand.

I get that "Directory" is what Microsoft is calling this sort of end document, and I know how to create a mail merge containing all records and specified fields. But, using a company directory as an example, I'd like to create a document that keys on a "Department" field (which would be the same value for {x} records), generating however many pages with "Department" in the header and all records matching it on subsequent pages, but then throwing in a page break and starting a new set of pages when the value in "Department" changes. For example, from:

STEVENS, BOB | ACCOUNTING | 555-1512
TANAKA, SCOTT | ACCOUNTING | 555-2352
YU, LISA | ACCOUNTING | 555-2362
LOPEZ, JAMES | AUDIT | 555-2351
SWEET, LINDA | AUDIT | 555-3635

To:

ACCOUNTING -----
STEVENS, BOB - 555-1512
TANAKA, SCOTT - 555-2352
YU, LISA - 555-2362
AUDIT -----
LOPEZ, JAMES - 555-2351
SWEET, LINDA - 555-3635

Again, I know this seems like basic functionality, and I apologize if it insults the intelligence of you Mail Merge gurus out there! The weird thing is, I might be able to do this working from Access, but this is a smaller project. Thanks!

posted by pzarquon to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

The easiest way to do this is to stay in Excel and use a PivotTable.

Select your data, including the column headers. Choose "PivotTable" from the Data menu. In the wizard, click Finish; no need to customize anything. Now, drag the "Department" label up to where it says "Drop Page Fields Here." Then, drag the Name field to where it says "Drop Row Fields Here." Then, drag the Phone field to the same place where you just dragged the Name field.

Now, you've got a customizable chart, where you can pick the department from a dropdown box on the top. The only problem is, it's giving you "subtotals" for each phone number. To turn that off, right-click on Name, pick Field Settings, and set Subtotals to None. Then, right-click on Name again, pick Table Settings, and un-check anything that calls for a "Grand Total."

You can either print this for each department, or copy and paste the table into Word.
posted by profwhat at 11:51 AM on September 7, 2005