Before completing this challenge, I had no idea that it was possible to merge data from an Excel document into a Word document! For my Word doc I wrote up a quick weekly letter that I might send out to parents on Fridays to keep them updated on the book that we had read in class that week, and which would be coming next week. I used the Excel database with all of Kevin Henkes' books and merged some of them into my letter.
Actually enacting the merge was a little bit trickier than I thought!!! In order to stagger the book titles in my document, I ended up making a new column in my Excel document so that I could use the two different values in the merge fields. What would have been easier--though I didn't figure this out until after I had finished--would have been to set a rule using the options from the mail merge command toolbar that would have allowed me to skip to the next value if the first had already been used. Something to think about for next time and try out on my own!!
Download and view my final Word document here.
Image credit
Actually enacting the merge was a little bit trickier than I thought!!! In order to stagger the book titles in my document, I ended up making a new column in my Excel document so that I could use the two different values in the merge fields. What would have been easier--though I didn't figure this out until after I had finished--would have been to set a rule using the options from the mail merge command toolbar that would have allowed me to skip to the next value if the first had already been used. Something to think about for next time and try out on my own!!
Download and view my final Word document here.
Image credit