Mail merge with Word

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

I have documents in Word that I would like to merge with data from Filemaker Pro 8.5. Is there an easy way to do that?

[Genx]

Any reason you don't want to do it internally within FileMaker?

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/99166/post/195917/hl/mail+merge/

[Ender]

If you prefer to stick with your Word documents, you can setup the mail merge by first exporting the relevant fields/records in .mer format, then use that as the data source for the Mail Merge in Word.

[Genx]

... Or use FileMaker as the ODBC source for the data (no export), or you could use VBScript to automate the whole process.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Any reason you don't want to do it internally within FileMaker?

Because Word is a real word processor and not a db program with spell checking. You are probably aware that Word makes mass document formatting easy. The format I use has tables, tabs within the tables, running numbers of records within the tables, headers with tabs, and footers with tabs and page counts. Plus the Word .doc file is something I can share with everyone I work with for them to comment and make changes.

... Or use FileMaker as the ODBC source for the data (no export)

How do I use FileMaker as ODBC source? Word looks for specific file types to merge with and the FileMaker file type isn't any of them.

If you prefer to stick with your Word documents, you can setup the mail merge by first exporting the relevant fields/records in .mer format, then use that as the data source for the Mail Merge in Word.

This is not the "easy" way I'm searching for, but it might have to do. Easy would be where Word hooks into the FMP file and allows me to insert specific fields by name while I'm creating the Word doc.

[Genx]

Easy would be where Word hooks into the FMP file and allows me to insert specific fields by name while I'm creating the Word doc.

ODBC... Open Data Base Connectivity, FileMaker supports it, and so does Microsoft Word, Access, Excel, msSQL, mySQL, think of a database or a piece of software that deals with data or information in some way and it probably supports it in some form... If you use ODBC to source the data, you are plugging straight into the FileMaker file... Look it up.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Went to the Word help file. It indicated that I needed special drivers. I went to the install disk and found nothing having to do with ODBC drivers. Went to MS and could not find a single word about FileMaker for Windows. All the references to FileMaker were for the Mac. And I found very little about ODBC at MS. Their ODBC drivers support Oracle, Fox Pro, and SQL.

I think I need a reply from someone who is doing it now and not talking about the general theory of doing it.

[Wim Decorte]

Hi DcHall,

The drivers are available from FileMaker, not MS. Try here: www.filemaker.com/odbc. ODBC/JDBC drivers are always supplied by the data source, in this case FM.

Word merge fully supports ODBC data sources, but it does require that you know how to set up an ODBC data source on Windows. Have you done that before?

An alternative as Genx pointed out is to use a VBscript generated in and triggered by FM that hooks into the Word Object Model and creates the Word document or does the merge for (Word merge als works with plain text files as the source for instance).

Hard for us to say what's easiest for you because we don't know what you've done before and what you're comfortable with.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

That looked sort of promising. Went back in to my database in FMP and found where I can share it with ODBC. There seems to be no difference.

What I'm used to doing is using Access as a database. The reason for trying FMP is to get a little easier interface with PDF files that we would like to link to. Access basically doesn't really want to play with images or PDFs.

I'm attaching (I think) a screenshot of me trying to use merge from Word into the FMP db. Besides the obvious garbage I'm trying to merge with, now I need to know the field and record delimiters. Is this what I should be seeing?

[Genx]

I don't think you've set up your driver properly. Attached is a screenshot of me following what seems to be a fairly straight forward process of setting up the connection in word... Unless you are literally trying to use an .fp7 file as your merge source directly instead of trying to go via the ODBC connection

[LaRetta]

Genx, even zoomed, I can't read any of that for squat. Can you provide 3-4 screen shots instead? :wink2:

[mr_vodka]

Hmmm I can read it fine. Are you using your mac or pc LaRetta?

[Genx]

Hi LaRetta,

In windows at least, it zooms to the original resolution after one click.

[Lee Smith]

That's funny LaRetta, on my Mac, it fills the screen in a new Browser Page and I can read all of it.

What browser are you using?

I use Safari, just incase you are using FireFox.

Lee

[LaRetta]

My Mac is sitting on the floor at present. I'm rearranging my network.

A single click on this Dell doesn't make it large enough for me to see it - I'm using Acme rental eyes today as well.

[Genx]

Dunno, render's fine in Internet Explorer and Firefox...

[LaRetta]

Oh! Never mind! There was a tiny magnifying glass with a plus. But I didn't see it. Don't software designers know that teeny-tiny things (designed to magnify so someone who can't see CAN) ... need to be big enough for the person to see to begin with? Ha ha!

[Genx]

Lol, it's funny cause it's true.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Well that's quite a bit different from what I'm used to seeing. I'm attaching a PDF showing the process I go through the first time I link to Access from Word. Here's the narration for each of the four images.

1. Just shows the Word doc with the invisible mouse hovering over the Mail Merge Helper.

2. Shows the Mail Merge Helper at stage 2 of helping. I have already picked the current document as the merge doc. In stage two you select the data source.

3. A navigation window has opened whereby you go find the file you want to use for the data. Note that it defaults to the Word family of document extensions.

4. Shows the choices scrolled to the bottom of the list. FMP is not a choice unless it's coded in one of the other choices.

Ideas?

BTW I'm using Word 2000, the one, the only. I should have mentioned this up front. Other than that my computer is a year old and reasonably decent HP Pavilion with XP Media Center. 2G of memory, 75% free HD, etc. The only thing ancient on the computer is Office 2000. It always seemed that by the time MS debugged the next version of Office, they came out with another buggy one. O-2000 always works for me.

Scrnshots.pdf

[Genx]

FMP is never a choice... You need ODBC, which after a quick google search apparently isn't very easy to work with in Word 2000-.

If you're really determined to use Office 2000, you're going to have to write manual connection and select SQL statements using the MS Query tool.

RE: Your apparent dislike of Office 2003, i think it might be slightly unfounded. While Microsoft (or any software developmer) doesn't usually get it right straight off, i put it to you that 4 years and volumes of office on a couple of hundred million PC's and Mac's all over the world MAY have exposed most of the bugs that severely distrupt users, plus my experience with office 2003 has been pretty decent. If you do have an issue with Microsoft's products specifically and you fear they haven't the intellect to ever release a decent piece of software (not my personal opinion) or your just a cheap skate (that's me ) you might try www.openoffice.org -- I'm pretty sure they support ODBC as a straight forward source, plus they do PDF'ing without plugins : I'm downloading a copy for my laptop now for the sake of it and to check the ODBC settings ( They also support reading, saving and editing of .doc formats).

Edited March 4, 2007 by Guest

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

If it's that hard, I'll try the FMP export to merge file and see if I can handle that.

It's not that I don't trust MS or that I'm that cheap. Another factor you left out is the learning curve. Before I installed 2000 on this new computer I tried 2003 on a friend's computer. The look and feel was different enough that I was going to have to lose productivity for some time while I learned the new mouse and hidden features I know so well on the old one. I might be forgetting something but I've used Word heavily since it came out for the Mac in the late 80s and that 2003 thing seems to have been a major design mess. I've been using 2000 for 8 years and have considerable successful experience with it. Now with the intro of Vista and another new Office version, I'm considering going back to the Mac platform. I do have a couple programs that require Windows, but with the Mac that doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.

I tried Open Office in 2001. Granted it's been awhile but back then it was such a resource hog, even on a brand new computer, that I abandoned it and removed it from my HD. Things may have changed in that regard, too.

[Genx]

Well I thought i'd produce the method anyway... It's about 6 or maybe 7 short steps. Even if you used it just for this it might be easier for you.

Attached is the Open Office method for connecting to a data source and then using it within any document in case anyone stumbles across this at a later stage... Plus the entire install package is a mere 90mb, including the entire suite.

RE: the learning curve you describe for office, I may agree that there is always a learning curve (e.g. 2007 has taken me about a week to get used to) but in the end, the version upgrades occur for a reason, they are entirley new products, products that have to sell and to sell they need to be able to save you a lot of time and lot of money in order to justify upgrading... and with 2003 - 2007 after only using it for a week, it's already worth it (not that i use it on all PC's, just my laptop).

[Genx]

Actually this is cooler than i thought. You can use their Database program as a reporting utility and run queries on your data source to narrow down the merge categories.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

I just did an export to a .mer file and it worked great moving into my Word format. It's one extra step but at least it's not 50 extra steps and a whole new learning experience.

Thanks for the energy that went into this.

[Genx]

Yes, but whole new learning experiences are fun... e.g. this was the first time i bothered to try setup a direct odbc connection from FileMaker

But I'm glad you found a way that works suitably enough for you.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Thanks again. If I ever get to Oz, I'll ring you up.

[Noel C. Ice]

I have been using FileMaker and Word Mail Merge from the very first version of FileMaker, say 15 years ago or so. I use a FileMaker database with 100s of fields, and export as an .mer file and then use that with 300 page word forms using complicated Mail Merge Functions. Never a problem until now, and then only on one machine. VISTA 32 works fine and VISTA 64 worked fine, until now when the 64 bit machine all of a sudden gives me an "Open Data Source" Dialog box with "OLE DB Database Files" preselected, which if selected won't work.

[jfcarbel]

Also, What about if you have related child data you want to merge into a Word Table?

I have found this product EZxslt can do this, but its limited to one dynamically filled table per Word Doc. It is also quite picky because of the extra formatting that Word adds when you edit. I had to do a document section over and over and then even after all that needed to fix the xslt it generated because I could not get it right via their xslt generation tool.

I'd love to know how others who use Word do this for more complex merges that involve child data etc.