Exporting fields to a Word merge letter

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rbnomer - 30 Dec 2003 09:04 GMT

First , thank you Bill, Harry, LouLou and Numb. I appreciate the time you
took to reply. I did do some research on the FM Developer at FileMakers web
site. There is a pdf there that explains in more detail the differences
between the Dev version and FM Pro (what do ya call it , "regular").

Anyway, on to my current question. Correct me if I'm wrong: Isn't it still
true that Microsoft makes it cumbersome, despite FMaker gains, to use
FileMaker address fields in a Word merge letter?

I can do it by first exporting to a csv or tab file, then turning it into an
Excel file and then making sure it is parsed properly and so on. So here is
my question and I am not lookin for "maybe's".

Can anyone tell me the absolutely SHORTEST AMOUNT OF STEPS TO GET FM FIELDS
INTO A MERGE MICROSOFT WORD 2003 LETTER? AND THEN OF COURSE NO JOKING AROUND
PLEASE. I'm not lookin for replies like "Hi Richard , 3 or Hi Richard 7.
There must be someone out there who has figured out the simplest most
elegant and efficient way to do this. Boy , would I like to hear from you!

Happy New Year Everyone.
Richard N.

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Enid Y. Karr - 30 Dec 2003 16:56 GMT

> Anyway, on to my current question. Correct me if I'm wrong: Isn't it still
> true that Microsoft makes it cumbersome, despite FMaker gains, to use
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> INTO A MERGE MICROSOFT WORD 2003 LETTER? AND THEN OF COURSE NO JOKING AROUND
> PLEASE.

Note that I am refering to Word:mac and FMP 5.5 here (running on OS 10.3
- this
operation always crashed when I was running classic):

1. Create letter as a Word Main document.
2. Get Data using FMP file (I always had to export as tab sep and dump
into Excel
before, but this current scenario works directly from FMP*)
3. Drag and drop fields
4. Merge.

So I think this is very dependent upon exactly what versions of the
various applications
you are using.

* has to be running on your machine, I think. This has been a problem
for us and if
anyone knows how to merge directly from a FM database running off a
remote server, please
clue me in.

Enid

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Howard Schlossberg - 30 Dec 2003 17:02 GMT

I don't know if its been suggested or not, but you might also check out
EZxslt at http://www.chapsoft.com/ezxslt/index.html for doing what you
want. It may be overkill in your case, but it may not.

> First , thank you Bill, Harry, LouLou and Numb. I appreciate the time you
> took to reply. I did do some research on the FM Developer at FileMakers web
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> Happy New Year Everyone.
> Richard N.

Signature

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg (818) 883-2846
FM Pro Solutions Los Angeles, California
Associate Member, FileMaker Solutions Alliance

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Tim 'Webko' Booth - 30 Dec 2003 23:05 GMT

> First , thank you Bill, Harry, LouLou and Numb. I appreciate the time you
> took to reply. I did do some research on the FM Developer at FileMakers web
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> There must be someone out there who has figured out the simplest most
> elegant and efficient way to do this. Boy , would I like to hear from you!

1. Export found set to .mer format - this has the field names as the
first record.
2. Point your Word document at the .mer file and use the fields as required.

There are ways using Word 2003 and FileMaker with XML to make this even
more seamless, but they require a bit of setting up in the first place.

Cheers

Webko

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