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Complex Mail Merge (CSV to Word, CSV to PDF, or Other)

QUESTION: How do you write an ifStatement for Word or for PDF to calculate multiple rows per matching result?

USEAGE: What I am trying to do seems fairly straight forward and was very easy when I was able to use MS Access 15 years ago, but with Access being not a possibility anymore, I am hoping somebody has a reasonable solution.

The WHAT: I am trying to generate Statements/Invoices from a CSV (or spreadsheet of any format) into a nice report layout. Let's say the columns look like this:

First Name | Last Name | Account | Address | Item | Description | Item Total
Jane | Smith | 123 | 111 Main St | Ice Cream | it's really cold | $100.00

This is super easy and I can do in Word within 10 minutes and make it "pretty".

Simple Invoice in Word

BUT what if there are multiple Items per invoice?
So maybe the CSV looks like:

First Name | Last Name | Account | Address | Item | Description | Item Total
Jane | Smith | 123 | 111 Main St | Ice Cream | it's really cold | $100.00
Jane | Smith | 123 | 111 Main St | Hot Dogs | all beef, all the time | $200.00

I still want there to only be 1 invoice per person but not sure how to do an if statement in Word that would say "If there are multiple items per person, put them on a new row, then total them all together"

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I would be glad to have the CSV go into a PDF fillable form if I could get the multiple rows to work - I just cannot figure that portion out.
Other options: I looked at OpenOffice "Base" but couldn't get a nice form for a very custom Report. I researched briefly on how to do something like this on AWS, but without any luck. I don't think Microsoft has anything like Access anymore

Solution

  • You can use Word's Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge facility for this (the terminology depends on the Word version). To see how to do so with any mailmerge data source supported by Word, check out my Microsoft Word Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge Tutorial at: http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/38721-microsoft-word-catalogue-directory-mailmerge-tutorial.html or: http://www.gmayor.com/Zips/Catalogue%20Mailmerge.zip The tutorial covers everything from list creation to the insertion & calculation of values in multi-record tables in letters. Do read the tutorial before trying to use the mailmerge document included with it.

    Depending on what you're trying to achieve, the field coding for this can be complex. However, since the tutorial document includes working field codes for all of its examples, most of the hard work has already been done for you - you should be able to do little more than copy/paste the relevant field codes into your own mailmerge main document, substitute/insert your own field names and adjust the formatting to get the results you desire. For some worked examples, see the attachments to the posts at: http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/9180-mail-merge-duplicate-names-but-different-dollar.html#post23345 http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/11436-access-word-creating-list-multiple-records.html#post30327

    Another option would be to use a DATABASE field in a normal ‘letter’ mailmerge main document and a macro to drive the process. An outline of this approach can be found at: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/many-to-one-email-merge-using-tables/8bce1798-fbe8-41f9-a121-1996c14dca5d Conversely, if you're using a relational database or, Excel workbook with a separate table with just a single instance of each of the grouping criteria, a DATABASE field in a normal ‘letter’ mailmerge main document could be used without the need for a macro. An outline of this approach can be found at: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_winother-mso_2010/mail-merge-to-a-word-table-on-a-single-page/4edb4654-27e0-47d2-bd5f-8642e46fa103 For a working example, see: http://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/37844-mail-merge-using-one-excel-file-multiple.html The problem with the DATABASE field, though, is that it won't provide the totals you're after. Nevertheless, if you're going down the macro route, it wouldn't take too much more code to append a totals row to the resulting table.

    Alternatively, you may want to try one of the Many-to-One Mail Merge add-ins, from: Graham Mayor at http://www.gmayor.com/ManyToOne.htm; or Doug Robbins at https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=5AEDCB43615E886B&id=5AEDCB43615E886B!566

    PS: While I'm cognisant of StackOverflow's preference for the substance of answers to be posted here rather than linked to, the complexity in this case is far too great to deal with that way, besides which, one can't post the actual field codes or a document containing them here.