Re: Table driven mail merge

"Emily Jones" <emilyj_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:44d5bca5$0$640$5a6aecb4_at_news.aaisp.net.uk...
> The client runs a training organisation. They have a large amount of
> corresondence to send. Contents of the correspondence vary, and
increasingly
> so, according to type of course, type of buyer, type of job student has
etc.
>
> I'm attempting to move away from lots of different queries driving lots of
> different Word templates to a completely table driven approach.

Been there, done that.

There is a large DB application called BANNER that keeps track of most of the administrative data for a university.

I once did some consulting for the alumni organization of a university, and they send out a lot of correspondence in the course of fund raising. I'm not sure, but I seem to recall that BANNER already has functionality like what you describe.

But first, why do you want to move away from Word templates? Does Word limit your throughput? your flexibility? your choice of platforms?

You might want to experiment with letting a large DB APP manage all the recipient and address data, and all the data needed for selection criteria, but then express each selected list in a form that can be fed to Word. That's not as hard as it sounds, especially if you're getting decent network support. Received on Mon Aug 07 2006 - 13:46:53 CEST