Jewish World Review July 23, 2003 / 23 Tamuz, 5763


How to add the Mail Merge command to the Word toolbar; how to save as a Word doc; company that offers a file/folders print program?

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | (KRT) Q. I want to create mailing labels from a list of names - with addresses - I have saved in Microsoft Word, but my rather substantial efforts to find a solution hit a brick wall. I went to the Microsoft Knowledge Base and found how to convert the name and address data from a one-column document to a table format, as recommended in Knowledge Base Article 140344, "WD97: How to convert data in one column to a table for merging."

This worked fine, but I hit a snag when I then tried to follow Knowledge Base instructions to create the actual labels from my new table.

I can't get past step one. It says: Open the document in Word and on the Tools menu, click Mail Merge. But when I click the Tools menu, the Mail Merge box does not appear. Thus, after all of that work with the Knowledge Base I still can't complete the following steps and so I cannot create the labels.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

_John R. McCarthy, Columbia, Mo.

A. You deserve better than this, Mr. M. What a shame that just one small bit of advice was missing after you did all of that work ferreting out help using Microsoft's huge database of past problems reported by customers at www.support.Microsoft.com. I urge other readers to check out this sometimes baffling, sometimes miracle-working self-help tool.

It's baffling in that you weren't told how to add the Mail Merge command to the Word toolbar. Usually a technical support person is around to switch it on but it's quite simple. Just click on Tools in Word's main command list called the toolbar. Then select Customize and then Toolbar. There you will find a long list of commands that can be added or removed from view when Tools is clicked, including Mail Merge.

This one simple move will reward you for all that research learning how to set up spreadsheet-style tables with cells holding data originally just included in documents.

The conversion tool can be a lifesaver for folks who create documents with information such as sales listed by state and dollar amount, then find they need to use spreadsheet powers to sort by category or add up amounts.

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Q. Recently I sent a resume to an employer and received a response back informing me that his firm could not open attachments, and adding, "please send as a word document." For the life of me I cannot figure out how to do this. Please help! I use Netscape for the Web and e-mail.

_Jake Walker

A. In business parlance the expression "word document" means text created in Microsoft Word, the costly, complex and confusing software that so bedeviled Mr. M. in the question above this one. When one is in job search mode, laying out a stack of dead presidents for computer software is a huge imposition and best bypassed if possible.

And for you, Mr. W., it's possible indeed.

All versions of Windows come with a built-in text-editing software capable of creating files called RTF (rich text format) that work perfectly when opened by Microsoft Word. To call up the free software, click on Start and then Programs and Accessories. In the list this brings up will be a program called WordPad that creates .rtf files.

Now open that Netscape e-mail file where you typed in that resume and use the Control + A command to select all of the text. Then type Control + C to copy it all into memory. Finally, go back to WordPad, open it, and type Control + V to paste the resume into the text editor.

You need a nice typeface to make it look like the Word documents an employer desires so click Control + A again and then click Format in the WordPad toolbar. The menu this summons lets you pick a typeface or font and the best choice is the widely used Times New Roman.

It might be a good idea to fiddle a bit with WordPad's font display feature that lets one select a block of text, such as a headline, and put it into a bigger and/or darker typeface than the body of the text. You can select headings and such by placing the cursor at the start of a bit of text and then holding down the shift key while moving the cursor with the arrows at the bottom of the keyboard. Then click on Format and Font and pick a larger size for the selected phrase.

Now fire up Netscape, open an e-mail, address it to your desired employer and use the clip-and-paste techniques to incorporate the .doc file into the note as you were requested.

Q. Do you perhaps know of any company that offers a file/folders print program? One that will allow me to sort and print files/folders with their attributes listed?

_Percy Walker, Los Angeles

A. Two letters in a row from guys named Walker and I'm working hard to keep myself from asking how your Uncle Jay is doing. Forgive me. I am a little starved for humor right now, what with unemployment hitting all around us and Microsoft continuing to refuse to incorporate a badly needed feature in Windows to permit users to print hard-copy listings of files and folders in different directories.

Microsoft doesn't sell printers so it doesn't want to make it particularly easy to use them, I guess. For the supplemental software you are seeking, I urge you to go to Cnet's superb downloads site (www.downloads.com) and use the search term File Monkey. The program is a Swiss Army knife file utility, with the file-handling features Windows lacks. This includes everything from splitting large files or combining small ones to producing a list of all the files in a given drive or folder with attributes included. Also offered are batch renaming and encoding files with passwords, a handy form of encryption.

Ironically, File Monkey creates its lists as onscreen text files and to print out hard copies one needs to use the same select/copy/paste commands described in the answer for the other Mr. W.

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James Coates is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Let us know what you think of rthis column by clicking here.

Up


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