Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found

Mac Tip: Create custom icons for external hard drives. Sep 10, 2017 In these screenshots I applied custom icons to internal drives, but it also works for external hard drives, including USB flash drives. Even better: in my tests, changing an icon on one Mac will change it on every Mac, so you'll always be able to quickly find your drive if you're using another computer. Aug 06, 2019 An external hard drive often has a different icon than the internal drives. This is because the external drives provide their own icon and doesn't rely on Windows 10 to give you one and these icons sometimes also highlight the manufacturer of the external drive. That said, you can always change the icon for an external drive to whatever you want. New Macs ship with a clean desktop, meaning you won't see icons for the computer's main drive, external drives plugged into the USB port, or network drives and so on. If the icon does not change, reboot your computer. Note about Time Machine: When you select a drive as the Time Machine backup destination, volume will always display the Time Machine icon and cannot be modified. See Time Machine icon below: TOP Windows. If you reformat or erase your external hard drive in Windows, the disk icon may.

• Mail Merge Excel To Word On Mac
• Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found Using
• Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found Windows 10
• Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found To Print

Convert Labels into Mail Merge Data File

If you're already using an Excel spreadsheet as your data source for a mail merge in Word, go to Step 2 in this topic. If the data source is a.txt or a.csv file that contains your Gmail contacts, for example, use the Text Import Wizard to set up your data inExcel. For example, you're using mail merge to print your contact list on a single sheet of paper. Use the Next Record rule to tell Word to proceed to the next record without starting a new page. Note: A sheet of mailing labels is laid out as a table in Word. When you run a mail merge, Word pulls names, addresses, and other information directly from your Excel spreadsheet into your labels or envelopes. The merge will run more smoothly if all the information you want to include is ready—so, the first step is to make sure your spreadsheet is formatted properly.

See also my Labels to Excel Worksheet add-in

The company addresses used in this example, were taken from an old sample mailing list and may not reflect the current addresses of the companies concerned.

Convert the table to text

If you have more than one page of mailing labels in a document, it becomes difficult to maintain. The labels should be converted to a mail merge data source which can be merged to create a new label document.

In the following examples I have toggled-on the formatting information (CTRL+SHIFT+8 - or click the ¶ button on the Home tab of the Word ribbon) to demonstrate more clearly what is happening.

The first step is to extract the addresses by converting the table to text. In Word versions to 2003, click in the table and from the Table menu select Convert > Table to Text.

In Word 2007/2016 select the table then click Convert to Text on the Data section of the Layout Tab of the ribbon. The button positions vary with version, but the command is at the right hand side of the ribbon.

Using paragraph marks as record separators (see above), the result should appear like the first of the two examples below.

If, like the right column example, it has the marks that indicate 'soft returns' against some of the address lines, then you must use the replace function to replace ^l (lower case L - which represents ) with ^p (which represents ¶), to produce a result similar to that of the left column.

With label documents spanning several pages, it will probably be necessary to extract each page separately.

If each label had the same number of address lines, you could simply convert back to a table now, but they rarely do, so we now need a few more steps to complete the process. First step is to insert a marker that will hold the ends of each address. Each address is terminated by (at least) a double paragraph mark, so we can run a wildcard search to replace that double paragraph mark with a random and unique string of characters to produce the result below. On reflection, '@' was not the most ideal choice as it is a reserved character in searches, but we can work round that one.

To search for a paragraph mark in a wildcard search, you must enter ^13 and not ^p in the 'Find what' string. The 'Replace with' string should, however, use ^p.

For more information on wildcard searching in Word see https://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm

Next step is to swap those paragraph marks for tabs, to put each record on its own line. The search string looks for each paragraph mark and the character preceding it, but *not* characters preceded by @. The replacement string restores the preceding character and adds a tab in place of the paragraph mark.

The result is as follows:

Next step is to lose the marker. Use a simple search, without the wildcard option, to replace the marker with nothing:

If you wish to sort the list into alphabetical order, you can do so now, or later when you have converted the list to a table.

Mail Merge Excel To Word On Mac

You can now select the list and again from the Word 2003 Table menu, convert the selected text back to a table.

In Word 2007/2016 the convert text to table command can be found on the Insert Tab of the ribbon after clicking Table:

Thereafter whichever Word version you use the dialogs are similar.

Add a title row at the top of the table. The names are not critical, just make them memorable and unique.

Because the original labels did not have a fixed number of lines, the different parts of the address do not line up vertically. This should not matter when you come to merge the addresses into the new label document. Simply include all the fields on the label.

Save the finished table and you have a data source that is easier to maintain and which Word can use to create a new label merge.

Better still copy the table to an Excel worksheet for even more versatility.

Process as above using a macro:

Below is a macro based which adopts a different approach and which includes a few corrections for matters that might pop up along the way, then saves the results as a sorted data source. The macro has been tested on a variety of (but not all possible) label layouts in both Word 2003 and Word 2007, so please test it on a COPY of your label document.

If you don't know what to do with the macro code see Installing a macro from a listing
For those uncomfortable with VBA programming - See also my Labels to Excel Worksheet add-in

Best of blues piano pdf torrent pdf. [Originally posted June 2012. Updated August 2018.]

The Mail Merge feature of Microsoft Word is one of my favorite parts of the program. It is extremely powerful for creating labels and customized letters, emails, or reports. Once you learn how to use it, you can save countless hours of work. Unfortunately, the task of learning to master all of its idiosyncrasies can give you countless headaches.

One of the perennial annoyances of Mail Merge is its inability to format numbers from an Excel spreadsheet correctly. For example, a sales result in Excel appears as 100 but in Word it suddenly becomes 99.99999999996!

Fortunately, there is a way to fix this. In fact, there are three ways. We can modify the spreadsheet, modify the Mail-Merge document, or simply modify the way the two files connect to each other. Although this last approach is little known, it might be best approach—except for one giant detail: It no longer works for Word 2016.

[Note for users of various versions of Microsoft Office: The steps presented here are for Office 2016 as of August 2018, but the steps needed for older and newer versions of Word and Excel are very similar if not identical.]

The first way is to avoid the problem: In the Excel worksheet, insert a column with a formula that converts the Excel numbers or dates into a text format that is exactly the same as what you would want to appear in your Mail Merge document.

To do this, you need to use Excel's TEXT function, which enables you to convert a number or date into its equivalent text formatted exactly the way you desire. The downside is that you need to know certain formatting codes. Although these codes are identical to those used in the Custom Number formatting feature of Excel, they are rarely seen by most Excel users.

For example, the formulas TEXT(B3, '$#,##0.00') and TEXT(C5, 'M/dd/yy') convert number and date data into textual data (in this case, '$12,345.67' and '12/01/10').

(Tip: It is a good idea to format the cells containing these formulas in a different style, say, italic, or some unusual color to remind you that these numbers are simply text. In older versions of Excel, these 'numbers' could not be used in calculations. In Excel 2016, they can be used in all formulas except aggregate functions, such as, SUM and AVERAGE.)

The advantage of formatting numbers and dates as text is that text is transported from Excel into a Word Mail Merge document unmolested. Well, almost unmolested. Formatting options such as font, size, and color do not make the trip.

Format Codes for Excel's TEXT Function

A collection of the most commonly used codes is presented at the right. A key thing to remember is that both '0' and '#' act as placeholders for digits, but '0' will force leading or trailing zeros to appear. The '#' placeholder will be replaced by a digit only if it is not a leading or trailing zero. Thus, the code '00000' will ensure that the leading zero is not truncated from New Jersey postal zip codes.

These codes for numbers, dates, and times can be used in the TEXT function or in Excel's Custom number formats. As an extra bonus, they can also be used in the 'Numeric Switches' in Word Mail-Merge Fields described in the next section.

Unfortunately, there is a slight difference between the way these codes work in Excel and Word in Microsoft Office 2013. In Excel, you can use either 'M' or 'm' for months or minutes. In almost all cases, Excel is smart enough to figure out which units you are talking about. But Word is not so smart, and you must use the capitalized letter to refer to months. Also, Excel has an additional code, 'MMMMM', which returns a single letter abbreviation for the month (e.g., 'J, F, M, A, …').

Supplementing a spreadsheet table with a few columns featuring TEXT functions is a simple and direct approach. Just remember that these cells may look like they contain numbers, but they cannot be used in SUM or AVERAGE functions. If you need to convert them into numbers again, just use the VALUE function.

Handle with Care: The ROUND Function

Instead of the TEXT() function, some users prefer to use the ROUND() function to trim off extra decimal places. As its name implies, Excel's ROUND() function will permanently round a number up or down to the number of decimal places you specify. The advantage is that the rounded number is not text and can still be used for further calculations. In many cases, the ROUND() function will work well with Mail Merge, but you may want to steer clear of it because of the following reasons:

1. The ROUND function will not preserve the dollar sign or the thousands separator (comma)
2. The ROUND function will truncate trailing zeros
3. The ROUND function sometimes causes Mail Merge to display the wrong number of decimal places. For example, a Mail Merge document occasionally shows 4 decimal places when the ROUND function had specified 2 or 3.

In rare cases, the ROUND function causes Mail Merge to show a slightly different number. For example, instead of displaying 1.0014, Mail Merge showed 1.0013.

Okay. But let's say that you can't or don't want to change your Excel spreadsheet. Well, there is something we can do in Word:

The second way to cajole Mail Merge into displaying numbers from Excel correctly is to modify the Word document. Specifically, this means applying the desired number format code to the Merge Fields in the Word document. (The merge fields basically tell the Word document which column in the Excel table has the desired data.) To apply a format to a field, you must include a numeric switch (formerly called a picture switch) in the field's field code.

The first thing you have to do is to see the actual field code. Open the Mail Merge document and click the Mailings tab at the top of the window. Be sure the Preview Results button is toggled off so that you can see the Mail-Merge fields. Then right-click a Mail-Merge field (such as «Donation») and choose the Toggle Field Code option. You should now see the actual field code for that field, which is designated by curly braces as in { MERGEFIELD Donation }. Now edit the field code by simply inserting a numeric switch code to the end of the field code, as in

There are many picture codes available. Here are four examples with their respective results:

As you can see, the numeric switch codes are identical to the Excel formatting codes except that they are preceded by '#' for numbers and '@' for dates. (Note the use of quotation marks in the date code but not in the number codes.) To see more of the codes available, refer to the table below, or see the online help for 'numeric switch' in Microsoft Word.

Here are some examples of how the numeric field codes work with data in a column labeled 'Sales' in an Excel spreadsheet.

In light of the fact that Word and Excel use the same formatting codes, we could not help wondering why they don't use the same function format. For example, why not have the MergeField function look something like:

Good question. You'll have to ask Microsoft.

Note: Before you start cursing me out, try to remember that when you add or change a numeric switch, the effect may not be shown immediately. You either have to update the field (right-click it and choose Update Field), or click the button Mailings > Preview Results. On one occasion I had to do this 2 or 3 times. If you are using the Mail-Merge Wizard, you may have to go back a step and return to see the effect of your changes. (Why? Again, you will have to ask Microsoft.)

The numeric switches in merge fields work well, but I find the process very difficult to remember. ('Is it a forward slash or a back slash?') Also, it is very easy to make a mistake. Fortunately, for some users there is another way:

The above approaches are relatively simple, but if you have more than a few fields that require formatting, they can drive you into early retirement. At the very least, they require you to remember format codes that, while similar, are used in very different ways.

A much more elegant and simple solution is to have Word link to the Excel workbook via a DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) link rather than the usual, presumably non-dynamic, linking process. That sounds a little daunting, but if you are smart enough to do Mail Merge, then DDE can a piece of cake. It is a simple two-step process, and the first step — enabling Word to open a file via DDE — has to be done only once.

[Does DDE work in Office 2016?Dynamic Data Exchange is an old technology, and it looks like Microsoft is in the process of pulling the plug on it. Sometimes it works for me in Office 2016, and sometimes it doesn't.

Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found Using

The trick appears to be that the Excel data source must be open before you access it from Word. As usual for Excel data sources, the table must begin on the first row of the first worksheet in the workbook file. If you do this, and have some patience, you should be able to get it to work.]

To set up Word 2013 for DDE links, do the following:

• Click: File > Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left and scroll down to the section General.
• Check the box labeled Confirm file format conversion on open.

That's all for the first step, and you never have to do it again. From now on, your copy of Word can open up many different types of files, and can open these by different avenues, including DDE. The only side effect of the above is that every time you open a non-Word file with Word, the program will give you a chance to change your mind. No problem.

The second and last step has to be done each time you select a data source for your Mail Merge operation (either in Step 3 of Word's Mail Merge Wizard or after you press the Select Recipients button in the Mailings ribbon). Relax. It is just three additional mouse clicks:

• After you have chosen the data file you would like to use, a new 'Confirm Data Source' dialog box will appear.
• The default type of link is by OLE, but that is not what you want.
• In the Confirm Data Source dialog box, click the check box to Show all.
• In the expanded list of file types, choose MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls). (Choose this even if you are using the newer Excel file format: *.xlsx.)
• If asked, confirm that you are selecting the Entire Spreadsheet.

If you have already selected a spreadsheet for your Word document, you may have to select it again, this time via a DDE link. That's it! From now on, your Excel formatting will travel over to Word Mail Merge documents fairly intact. One huge caveat here: Make sure that the data you want to merge are in the first sheet of your Excel workbook. (It took us two hours to finally figure out that DDE does not see anything but the first Excel worksheet!)

Save the finished table and you have a data source that is easier to maintain and which Word can use to create a new label merge.

Better still copy the table to an Excel worksheet for even more versatility.

Process as above using a macro:

Below is a macro based which adopts a different approach and which includes a few corrections for matters that might pop up along the way, then saves the results as a sorted data source. The macro has been tested on a variety of (but not all possible) label layouts in both Word 2003 and Word 2007, so please test it on a COPY of your label document.

If you don't know what to do with the macro code see Installing a macro from a listing
For those uncomfortable with VBA programming - See also my Labels to Excel Worksheet add-in

Best of blues piano pdf torrent pdf. [Originally posted June 2012. Updated August 2018.]

The Mail Merge feature of Microsoft Word is one of my favorite parts of the program. It is extremely powerful for creating labels and customized letters, emails, or reports. Once you learn how to use it, you can save countless hours of work. Unfortunately, the task of learning to master all of its idiosyncrasies can give you countless headaches.

One of the perennial annoyances of Mail Merge is its inability to format numbers from an Excel spreadsheet correctly. For example, a sales result in Excel appears as 100 but in Word it suddenly becomes 99.99999999996!

Fortunately, there is a way to fix this. In fact, there are three ways. We can modify the spreadsheet, modify the Mail-Merge document, or simply modify the way the two files connect to each other. Although this last approach is little known, it might be best approach—except for one giant detail: It no longer works for Word 2016.

[Note for users of various versions of Microsoft Office: The steps presented here are for Office 2016 as of August 2018, but the steps needed for older and newer versions of Word and Excel are very similar if not identical.]

The first way is to avoid the problem: In the Excel worksheet, insert a column with a formula that converts the Excel numbers or dates into a text format that is exactly the same as what you would want to appear in your Mail Merge document.

To do this, you need to use Excel's TEXT function, which enables you to convert a number or date into its equivalent text formatted exactly the way you desire. The downside is that you need to know certain formatting codes. Although these codes are identical to those used in the Custom Number formatting feature of Excel, they are rarely seen by most Excel users.

For example, the formulas TEXT(B3, '$#,##0.00') and TEXT(C5, 'M/dd/yy') convert number and date data into textual data (in this case, '$12,345.67' and '12/01/10').

(Tip: It is a good idea to format the cells containing these formulas in a different style, say, italic, or some unusual color to remind you that these numbers are simply text. In older versions of Excel, these 'numbers' could not be used in calculations. In Excel 2016, they can be used in all formulas except aggregate functions, such as, SUM and AVERAGE.)

The advantage of formatting numbers and dates as text is that text is transported from Excel into a Word Mail Merge document unmolested. Well, almost unmolested. Formatting options such as font, size, and color do not make the trip.

Format Codes for Excel's TEXT Function

A collection of the most commonly used codes is presented at the right. A key thing to remember is that both '0' and '#' act as placeholders for digits, but '0' will force leading or trailing zeros to appear. The '#' placeholder will be replaced by a digit only if it is not a leading or trailing zero. Thus, the code '00000' will ensure that the leading zero is not truncated from New Jersey postal zip codes.

These codes for numbers, dates, and times can be used in the TEXT function or in Excel's Custom number formats. As an extra bonus, they can also be used in the 'Numeric Switches' in Word Mail-Merge Fields described in the next section.

Unfortunately, there is a slight difference between the way these codes work in Excel and Word in Microsoft Office 2013. In Excel, you can use either 'M' or 'm' for months or minutes. In almost all cases, Excel is smart enough to figure out which units you are talking about. But Word is not so smart, and you must use the capitalized letter to refer to months. Also, Excel has an additional code, 'MMMMM', which returns a single letter abbreviation for the month (e.g., 'J, F, M, A, …').

Supplementing a spreadsheet table with a few columns featuring TEXT functions is a simple and direct approach. Just remember that these cells may look like they contain numbers, but they cannot be used in SUM or AVERAGE functions. If you need to convert them into numbers again, just use the VALUE function.

Handle with Care: The ROUND Function

Instead of the TEXT() function, some users prefer to use the ROUND() function to trim off extra decimal places. As its name implies, Excel's ROUND() function will permanently round a number up or down to the number of decimal places you specify. The advantage is that the rounded number is not text and can still be used for further calculations. In many cases, the ROUND() function will work well with Mail Merge, but you may want to steer clear of it because of the following reasons:

1. The ROUND function will not preserve the dollar sign or the thousands separator (comma)
2. The ROUND function will truncate trailing zeros
3. The ROUND function sometimes causes Mail Merge to display the wrong number of decimal places. For example, a Mail Merge document occasionally shows 4 decimal places when the ROUND function had specified 2 or 3.

In rare cases, the ROUND function causes Mail Merge to show a slightly different number. For example, instead of displaying 1.0014, Mail Merge showed 1.0013.

Okay. But let's say that you can't or don't want to change your Excel spreadsheet. Well, there is something we can do in Word:

The second way to cajole Mail Merge into displaying numbers from Excel correctly is to modify the Word document. Specifically, this means applying the desired number format code to the Merge Fields in the Word document. (The merge fields basically tell the Word document which column in the Excel table has the desired data.) To apply a format to a field, you must include a numeric switch (formerly called a picture switch) in the field's field code.

The first thing you have to do is to see the actual field code. Open the Mail Merge document and click the Mailings tab at the top of the window. Be sure the Preview Results button is toggled off so that you can see the Mail-Merge fields. Then right-click a Mail-Merge field (such as «Donation») and choose the Toggle Field Code option. You should now see the actual field code for that field, which is designated by curly braces as in { MERGEFIELD Donation }. Now edit the field code by simply inserting a numeric switch code to the end of the field code, as in

There are many picture codes available. Here are four examples with their respective results:

As you can see, the numeric switch codes are identical to the Excel formatting codes except that they are preceded by '#' for numbers and '@' for dates. (Note the use of quotation marks in the date code but not in the number codes.) To see more of the codes available, refer to the table below, or see the online help for 'numeric switch' in Microsoft Word.

Here are some examples of how the numeric field codes work with data in a column labeled 'Sales' in an Excel spreadsheet.

In light of the fact that Word and Excel use the same formatting codes, we could not help wondering why they don't use the same function format. For example, why not have the MergeField function look something like:

Good question. You'll have to ask Microsoft.

Note: Before you start cursing me out, try to remember that when you add or change a numeric switch, the effect may not be shown immediately. You either have to update the field (right-click it and choose Update Field), or click the button Mailings > Preview Results. On one occasion I had to do this 2 or 3 times. If you are using the Mail-Merge Wizard, you may have to go back a step and return to see the effect of your changes. (Why? Again, you will have to ask Microsoft.)

The numeric switches in merge fields work well, but I find the process very difficult to remember. ('Is it a forward slash or a back slash?') Also, it is very easy to make a mistake. Fortunately, for some users there is another way:

The above approaches are relatively simple, but if you have more than a few fields that require formatting, they can drive you into early retirement. At the very least, they require you to remember format codes that, while similar, are used in very different ways.

A much more elegant and simple solution is to have Word link to the Excel workbook via a DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) link rather than the usual, presumably non-dynamic, linking process. That sounds a little daunting, but if you are smart enough to do Mail Merge, then DDE can a piece of cake. It is a simple two-step process, and the first step — enabling Word to open a file via DDE — has to be done only once.

[Does DDE work in Office 2016?Dynamic Data Exchange is an old technology, and it looks like Microsoft is in the process of pulling the plug on it. Sometimes it works for me in Office 2016, and sometimes it doesn't.

Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found Using

The trick appears to be that the Excel data source must be open before you access it from Word. As usual for Excel data sources, the table must begin on the first row of the first worksheet in the workbook file. If you do this, and have some patience, you should be able to get it to work.]

To set up Word 2013 for DDE links, do the following:

• Click: File > Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left and scroll down to the section General.
• Check the box labeled Confirm file format conversion on open.

That's all for the first step, and you never have to do it again. From now on, your copy of Word can open up many different types of files, and can open these by different avenues, including DDE. The only side effect of the above is that every time you open a non-Word file with Word, the program will give you a chance to change your mind. No problem.

The second and last step has to be done each time you select a data source for your Mail Merge operation (either in Step 3 of Word's Mail Merge Wizard or after you press the Select Recipients button in the Mailings ribbon). Relax. It is just three additional mouse clicks:

• After you have chosen the data file you would like to use, a new 'Confirm Data Source' dialog box will appear.
• The default type of link is by OLE, but that is not what you want.
• In the Confirm Data Source dialog box, click the check box to Show all.
• In the expanded list of file types, choose MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls). (Choose this even if you are using the newer Excel file format: *.xlsx.)
• If asked, confirm that you are selecting the Entire Spreadsheet.

If you have already selected a spreadsheet for your Word document, you may have to select it again, this time via a DDE link. That's it! From now on, your Excel formatting will travel over to Word Mail Merge documents fairly intact. One huge caveat here: Make sure that the data you want to merge are in the first sheet of your Excel workbook. (It took us two hours to finally figure out that DDE does not see anything but the first Excel worksheet!)

Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found Windows 10

It is a shame that Microsoft has not replaced DDE with a new technology that works in a similar manner. When DDE worked, it was marvelous. Let's hope an equally marvelous technology will appear in the near future.

Mail Merge Word For Mac With Excel Converter Not Found To Print

Does DDE work for you in Word 2016? If you have a comment about that or any other issue related to Mail Merge number formatting, please let me know. Click here to post an anonymous comment.