How do I make a directory from excel or .csv files?

October 10, 2015 4:41 PM

I need to make a directory of members from a .csv file---what is the easiest method?

I need to make a directory of an organization.This will be in booklet form and will list members' names, phone numbers, snail mail and email addresses, and areas of specialty.

I have both Excel and .csv files listing this information, along with other columns of info.

What is the simplest way to import from the Excel or .csv file just the information I need, listing each member separately with the lines for phone numbers, snail mail etc?

I am searching for the best way to do it, other than individually pasting and copying, which would be a labor-and-time-intensive task. I was thinking of using mail merge and just printing out the list from that, then copying into Publisher to make the directory? Would that be the simplest?

I am fairly knowledgeable about Publisher but not very skilled at using Excel sheets.

Thanks so much, Microsoft Office experts!

posted by ragtimepiano to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

If you want to use Publisher, you can just mail merge directly into Publisher from a CSV. You can do the same in Word if you prefer.
posted by ssg at 4:52 PM on October 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

If you're new to Excel, formulas with string concatenation might be helpful if you need to make changes to all the data before pasting.

Suppose for instance you had a name in A1, a phone number in B1, and an address in C1, and so on. You could put a formula in D1 with something like:

=CONCATENATE("Name: ",A1,CHAR(13),CHAR(10),"Phone: ", B1, CHAR(13),CHAR(10),"Address: ", C1)

This concatenates them all into a single cell, with labels. The CHAR stuff is to put in linebreaks. You could then drag down the D cell to fill the entire D column. Then copy that column into Word or whatever with consistent changes.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:40 AM on October 11, 2015

I do this about once a week at work, and the mail merge is the simplest method I've found. It literally only takes me about four minutes to do it. Just follow Word's step-by-step process, and it should be pretty easy.
posted by General Malaise at 12:52 PM on October 11, 2015

You could take the excel file, hide the columns you don't want visible, and copy and paste it into the booklet.

But why in a booklet? You could keep it in an online spreadsheet that your group can access anytime.
posted by jander03 at 1:10 AM on October 13, 2015