About Dawn Douglas Expertise I can answer most questions about Microsoft Publisher.
Experience I have been using Microsoft Publisher for 11 years. I started with Adobe InDesign and Pagemaker. I like Microsoft Publisher for it's ease of use.
Education/Credentials I am self taught in Microsoft Publisher. I learned by doing.
Question QUESTION: I created a spreadsheet of information for a class reunion booklet, and now would like to import this information into publisher to create a booklet. Any easy way to do this?
ANSWER: Hi Cheryl,
The easiest way is just to copy and paste the spreadsheet, resizing the columns and rows to fit your publisher document. There is no direct import in publisher unless it's a text file or a word document.
Hope that helps.
Very Respectfully,
Dawn
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QUESTION: Thanks Dawn, I played around with the Catalog Merge which appears to be more of what I was looking for. I was able to get this to work, but have one more question. How can I suppress the questions from being displayed in the merge when there is no answer. For example, some classmates answered all of the questions, come classmates didnt respond to any of the questions. So, I would like to supress the questions for those classmates, and only display their name in the bookelt. Is there any way to do this?
ANSWER: Hi Cheryl,
Let me see if I understood you correctly. You said you had an excel spreadsheet you wanted to import into a Publisher document, but you ended up using a merge function to import the information?
I must have misunderstood what you are trying to do. Where you able to use your spreadsheet as a database file or did you have to input the data to create the source file? I ask just as a point of reference. From my understanding you can only use an existing database file from access or an internal dbase from outlook. If you were able to convert your excel spreadsheet into a dbase file right in Publisher that would be a useful piece of information. Please share.
But to answer your other question. As you could probably tell when you looked at your fields there is no option for conditional formatting. Unfortunately, it merges on the field description alone without being able to put in a logical string I'm not aware of any operators that would make the data selective in identifying empty cells and excluding the question.
Hope that helps.
Very Respectfully,
Dawn
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QUESTION: I am able to use my spreadsheet as the source file. It contains approximately 300 lines, by 35 columns. Appoximately 75 have names addresses and answers to questions, the other 225 will just have a name displayed. Question about Publisher: Catolog Merge is very close to what I want, but it sizes each text box the same. It created approx 50 pages, 4 text boxes on each page. So as a test I went thru 2 pages and deleted the un-needed text where classmates did not answer questions, which I was able to do do, but then was not able to find an option which would then condense pages or space everything out.
Maybe Publisher is not the best option for what I am trying to do? Would you know if it would be easier to convert my excel document to a Word document and then into publisher using something other than the catalog merge?
Answer Hi Cheryl,
Catalog merge is a good option if you wanted create tickets or send out a mailing of a newsletter, brochure etc... But it seems like you need more control of the data you and catalog merge doesn't leave you with a whole lot of options. You can't set a fix merge field width, you have to manually manipulate the catalog merge area, and you restricted to 4x1 merge area.
What would probably work a bit better if you're going to use the merge function in publisher is for you to use mail merge and create a template arranging the text fields in cells based on how you want to present the information. You're not limited to the 4x1 because you can put as much information as you want on in a cell or multiple cells. You can control the size of the cell via the cell properties etc...
