Mail merge filtering problem

Question

I am trying to get a consistent result from filtering records during a mail merge from an Excel data file.

It has worked fine several times before, but now it does not: instead of filtering, I get all the records in the merge file.

Here is the filter I am using:

Query Options

M_2012   Greater than or equal   250

And PAYE   Equal to   Yes.

M_2012 is the option I am offered for the column headed 2012 (the data is formatted as Numeric XXX, and represents the total amount donated in the year 2012).

PAYE is the option I am offered for the column headed PAYE (the data is formatted as General, and has either Yes, No, or NA as data, indicating tax status).

Help, please!

Maurice

Answer 1

Many thanks, Bob.

I did all you suggested, but it still doesn't work.

It's puzzling that it was working at one time, some days ago.

I also have a mail merge output address formatting problem, which doesn't work with the \b switch, only with IF fields. (This was checked by your colleague Paul Edstein). To get this to work, I had to recover the mail merge source document created in Office Mac 2008, before I upgraded to v2011, because the Insert>Field function doesn't seem to be able to replicate the way it worked in v2008.

So now I have three problems with mail merge in v2011!

Should I try uninstalling/reinstalling Office v2011, and, if so, are there any steps I might miss?

Thanks for the information regarding the M_ appended: I was wondering about it!

Maurice

Answer 2

Well, you're right that the formatting shouldn't make a difference, but you never can tell :-)

I'm running the same versions & cannot reproduce the problem -- the filter works fine. All I can suggest is that you recheck everything & restart your Mac. If the problem persists, try in a newly created User Account to see if the behavior persists there.

BTW: The "2012" has the M_ appended to it because technically you cannot have a field name that starts with digits. That should not interfere, though.

Answer 3

Bob:

I see now that "Numeric XXX" is more correctly stated "#,##0" in Excel. I live and learn!

Maurice

Answer 4

Thanks, Bob, for your prompt response.

"Numeric XXX" is my way of indicating that this is a three digit unpunctuated number. When I look again, it is actually X,XXX, but this should make no difference to the filter, I think.

OS X 10.6.8

Office 2011 14.3.2

Maurice

Answer 5

I'm not seeing anything similar here :-} although I'm not sure what you mean by "Numeric XXX". Can you clarify that?

Also, what version of OS X are you using & what is your present update level of Office 2011?