Sophia do you have Word 2007? Because the mail merge for that is really very good.

I don't sumi--we only end up getting new computers/software about every 6 years!

I ended up learning enough access that it is no longer confusing to me, and now we are actually spending the money to get a database built, which is great! But a large number of people admins here really do not have the skills or the desire to take it upon themselves to be more "computer savvy", and pretty much act like a computer is a giant typewriters, so they here send me their "mailing lists" typed on labels, at which point I have to merge and sort and de-duplicate them.

Edit- I know I am spewing vitriol, but I have to do this A LOT, and I am constantly saying "at least put in in excel, even if you don't understand access"

I know, I know--that ship has sailed and it's a de facto database for many people, but it's so damned broken that way I've given up on trying to fix it with shoestrings and ceiling wax.

Le sigh.

My mac version of excel is not giving me the sort by record option. And the 'cells must be identical size' thing isn't going away. I even made all the cells the same size. No joy.

For me, doing mailmerge out of a Word table works better, actually.

Beej, you need to unmerge the cells. Then you can sort. Highlight them all, go to Format Cells, and there should be a button that has "merge cells" checked, and you need to uncheck it.

For me, doing mailmerge out of a Word table works better, actually.

I can't deal with word tables for some reason. How would that work? If I need a table in word, I usually make it in excel and import it!

I think I have a weird learning curve, though, because I learned to do anything mail mergy with Filemaker, and then moved to an environment where form letters are created by manually typing in the person's name, then hitting print. I tend to know there is a better way, but really have to persevere to figure it out. Before this job, the only Microsoft product that I used for anything was Excel.

I think it's all a matter of the tool you're most comfortable with. To me, inputting a lot of data is easier in Word, in part because you can just use tabs or make a comma-delimited file, then say "convert text to table." Mail merge is based on the title of each column, so you can set up addresses the way you can from Access and the like. You can sort alphabetically by, for example, a "LastName" column. You can also apply an assortment of math functions to number columns.

I never thought of the "text to table" thing!

meara (and all of you), thanks to infinity.

I've never seen the merge cells checkbox and had to drill down a bit to find it. It wasn't even actually checked, oddly enough, but had a - sign in it.

Duly unchecked, I now have a perfectly sorted list and a tremendous sense of relief.

Thankee!

WoooHooo! The Gigabyte fairies came by and sprinkled some expansion dust on my .mac account since 2am. Now at 10 Gig's instead of 1. A full 10 days ahead of schedule. :)

Maybe they are doing it alphabetically by account name (good to be a B!)