When you click Finish, you will be presented a Save dialog. On the final screen of the wizard, leave the default to register the database, but probably turn off "Open the database for editing". If you use the file browser, click OK when you are in the directory with the dBASE file(s). Again I emphasize, you only point to the directory, not to an individual dBASE file. On the next screen, either click on Browse and locate the directory where you stored your dBASE files, or type in the full path of the directory. On the first screen, select "Connect to an existing database", and choose dBASE as the type. You will be taken to the Database Wizard. From any OOo application, click on File→New→Database. The default "Western Europe (DOS/OS2-850/International)" has always worked for us.Īfter you have one or more dBASE files, it is time to set up your data source. When you save the file, Calc will ask you to choose a character set. I recommend that you specify zip codes especially, either as character or as number with no digits after the decimal, so you won't receive any surprises when you merge. If you do not specify these, Calc will determine the proper values based on the data in the column. On numeric fields, the first number is the length allowed before the decimal, and the second number is the number of digits stored after the decimal. Character fields may be specified as "FIELDNAME,C,10", and dates may be specified as "FIELDNAME,D", while numeric fields may be specified as "FIELDNAME,N,4,2". You may also wish to specify the field type and length. A limitation of dBASE files is that field names can only be ten characters-Calc will shorten whatever you put in to this length. In the first row of the file, specify field names. This works for spreadsheets, comma-delimited (CSV) files, and any other filetype that Calc will open. If you are working with existing data, you can probably convert it by opening it in Calc and saving it as a dBASE file. When using dBASE files as your data source, you only need to set up one data source for each directory (as will be explained later), and can add and remove files as needed. Our receptionist has a directory for each department. If you will be doing a lot of mail merge with a lot of data sources, it is appropriate to plan ahead how your files will be laid out. The first step in preparing for any mail merge task is to set up your data source. It is actually fairly simple to go through the steps manually once you get used to them. While the wizard may be good for limited cases, it does not handle the variety of mail merge tasks we needed. We also made the decision to avoid the normal mail merge tools provided in OOo 1.1, which evolved into the Mail Merge Wizard in 2.x. We found the dBASE file format to be the perfect solution for everyday mail merge tasks I then ran across a suggestion to use dBASE files, which have been the perfect solution. Also, each spreadsheet must be set up as a new data source. For example, if you find a mistake in your data while you are doing the mail merge, you must return to the spreadsheet to fix the mistake, then completely close OOo and open it again before continuing the merge. It turns out that this choice leads to several limitations. Our receptionist had always used Excel spreadsheets as data sources for MS Word, so we first tried using OOo's Calc spreadsheets. The first choice to make is database format. It took some trial-and-error to find the best methods for us, and that is what I will be describing here. In OOo there are lots of different ways to do mail merge. Since this seems to be a sticking point for many people, I am putting everything I have learned from helping her and have gleaned from various sources on the Internet together in this tutorial. Our receptionist does a lot of general secretarial duties, including lots of letters, envelopes, and labels that involve mail merge. The office where I am network administrator switched most users to (OOo) back at version 1.1, and has followed the upgrade process to the current version 2.3 (a few poor users who have to exchange documents outside the office with high fidelity are still clinging to their MS Office 97).
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