Forum Discussion
Better Way merge Excel Data to printable Customer Profile Publication
Hello All,
Every year I have to take our customers' data from within Excel and create an intricate form with Publisher > Mail Merge. I have to smush a bunch of tables into the file that is supposed to fit on one printed page, front and back. It contains their names, addresses, family members, purchases, etc. It's always been a matter of pride to make it look nice, as well as easy to read for our front desk employees and our customers. However, the ongoing amount of time required to:
- Make space for new/future data fields/tables
- Make sure the merge fields fit properly
- Fit in tables that only pertain to a small margin of our customers
- Hand fill in cost/payment information instead of merging the costs
I know it's a tremendous waste of time and I'm sure there's a better way to do it. I have absolutely no problem learning new skills (am happy to, actually), but I don't know where to start. What program / plug-in / macros should I use if I want my final product to be:
- printable form with merged data
- looks professional
- only prints the tables/fields needed (I guess like and 'if - then' / conditional table).
If some of the profiles are more than two pages, that's not a problem. But having hundreds of files printing out at 3 to 7 pages is too wasteful.
An example of one of the pages
Any advice is very appreciated!
Many Thanks!
4 Replies
- peiyezhuBronze Contributor
Make space for new/future data fields/tables?
Can you provide some raw data.and your expected result which maybe.helpful to visualize what kind of automation you want to achieve.- mabfrazerCopper ContributorFor example, if the customer adds additional people to their account, I would want to auto populate a new table that shows additional person(people) data = names, addresses, phone, email, vehicle, children, etc.
If the customer doesn't have additional people, I don't want those extra tables to be there. As it is now, I have to custom create extra forms for each extra person.
I'd also love to have it flag fields that are missing data, so that when the form prints, it makes a list of fields that need to be addressed.- peiyezhuBronze Contributorhttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vlookup-function-0bbc8083-26fe-4963-8ab8-93a18ad188a1
vlookup?
How about fill the form from a list from.another worksheet with vlookup?