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#1
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
Hi,
I'm designing a database to keep track of my agency's volunteers - we were using an outdated Excel spreadsheet before and a hack-job of a Word document to store email addresses. I've got pretty much all of the work done on form design and everything else but now I'm looking to maximize the usefulness of the data. I need to be able to do occasional mass-electronic mailing from queries but the problem I'm facing is having one field for e-mail addresses. A small number of volunteers has listed multiple email addresses in their information, and currently these multiple addresses are entered in the format: ; When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? |
#2
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
Ryan
If you "create extra fields for extra email addresses", you might as well keep using Excel! Because you will never know how many, you face interminable maintenance using this 'spreadsheetly' approach in Access. If the data in your situation is related one-to-many (one person has zero, one, or many email addresses), then consider using another table that holds valid pairs of [Person] & [EmailAddress]. That way, a person might have zero, one or many records, reflecting having zero, one or many email addresses. Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP "Ryan P" Ryan wrote in message ... Hi, I'm designing a database to keep track of my agency's volunteers - we were using an outdated Excel spreadsheet before and a hack-job of a Word document to store email addresses. I've got pretty much all of the work done on form design and everything else but now I'm looking to maximize the usefulness of the data. I need to be able to do occasional mass-electronic mailing from queries but the problem I'm facing is having one field for e-mail addresses. A small number of volunteers has listed multiple email addresses in their information, and currently these multiple addresses are entered in the format: ; When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? |
#3
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
Thanks Jeff,
The extra table seems like it might be a good idea to persue. I'd like to know though, have I hit a limitation in the Access/Outlook software or am I just doing something wrong? -Ryan "Jeff Boyce" wrote: Ryan If you "create extra fields for extra email addresses", you might as well keep using Excel! Because you will never know how many, you face interminable maintenance using this 'spreadsheetly' approach in Access. If the data in your situation is related one-to-many (one person has zero, one, or many email addresses), then consider using another table that holds valid pairs of [Person] & [EmailAddress]. That way, a person might have zero, one or many records, reflecting having zero, one or many email addresses. Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP "Ryan P" Ryan wrote in message ... Hi, I'm designing a database to keep track of my agency's volunteers - we were using an outdated Excel spreadsheet before and a hack-job of a Word document to store email addresses. I've got pretty much all of the work done on form design and everything else but now I'm looking to maximize the usefulness of the data. I need to be able to do occasional mass-electronic mailing from queries but the problem I'm facing is having one field for e-mail addresses. A small number of volunteers has listed multiple email addresses in their information, and currently these multiple addresses are entered in the format: ; When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? |
#4
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
On May 26, 12:04*pm, Ryan P wrote:
Thanks Jeff, The extra table seems like it might be a good idea to persue. I'd like to know though, have I hit a limitation in the Access/Outlook software or am I just doing something wrong? -Ryan "Jeff Boyce" wrote: Ryan If you "create extra fields for extra email addresses", you might as well keep using Excel! *Because you will never know how many, you face interminable maintenance using this 'spreadsheetly' approach in Access. If the data in your situation is related one-to-many (one person has zero, one, or many email addresses), then consider using another table that holds valid pairs of [Person] & [EmailAddress]. *That way, a person might have zero, one or many records, reflecting having zero, one or many email addresses. Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP "Ryan P" Ryan wrote in message ... Hi, I'm designing a database to keep track of my agency's volunteers - we were using an outdated Excel spreadsheet before and a hack-job of a Word document to store email addresses. I've got pretty much all of the work done on form design and everything else but now I'm looking to maximize the usefulness of the data. *I need to be able to do occasional mass-electronic mailing from queries but the problem I'm facing is having one field for e-mail addresses. *A small number of volunteers has listed multiple email addresses in their information, and currently these multiple addresses are entered in the format: ; When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. *I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? Create a second table for EMail addresses and include the unique ID for the Person. Then you can choose one as primary and send to it, or send to all of them. You can use SPLIT to break the e-mail addresses into separate values and then append them to your EMail Table... Person---(1,M)----EMailAddress CREATE TABLE Person( PersonID INT IDENTITY, FirstName VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, LastName VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, REMail varchar(255), PRIMARY KEY (PersonID)); CREATE TABLE EMailAddress( ePersonID INT, Email VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (ePersonID, Email), FOREIGN KEY ePersonID REFERENCES Person(PersonID)); to do the split is a bit more complicated... You would have to put this in a new code module, compile and run Public Sub SplitOutEmails() Dim rsStudent As DAO.Recordset Dim rsEMails As DAO.Recordset Dim varEMails As Variant Dim intCounter As Integer 'to loop through variant array of e- mails. Set rsStudent = DBEngine(0)(0).OpenRecordset("Student", dbOpenTable, dbReadOnly) Set rsEMails = DBEngine(0)(0).OpenRecordset("EMails", dbOpenTable, dbAppendOnly) Do Until rsStudent.EOF If Len(rsStudent.Fields("EMailAddresses")) 0 Then varEMails = Split(rsStudent.Fields("EMailAddresses"), ";") For intCounter = LBound(varEMails) To UBound(varEMails) With rsEMails .AddNew .Fields("StudentID") = rsStudent.Fields ("StudentID") .Fields("EMailAddress") = varEMails(intCounter) .Update End With Next intCounter End If rsStudent.MoveNext Loop MsgBox "done" End Sub |
#5
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
I think what you may have hit is the kind of a speed bump you create for
yourself if you try to force Access to behave like Excel. Good luck! Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP "Ryan P" wrote in message ... Thanks Jeff, The extra table seems like it might be a good idea to persue. I'd like to know though, have I hit a limitation in the Access/Outlook software or am I just doing something wrong? -Ryan "Jeff Boyce" wrote: Ryan If you "create extra fields for extra email addresses", you might as well keep using Excel! Because you will never know how many, you face interminable maintenance using this 'spreadsheetly' approach in Access. If the data in your situation is related one-to-many (one person has zero, one, or many email addresses), then consider using another table that holds valid pairs of [Person] & [EmailAddress]. That way, a person might have zero, one or many records, reflecting having zero, one or many email addresses. Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP "Ryan P" Ryan wrote in message ... Hi, I'm designing a database to keep track of my agency's volunteers - we were using an outdated Excel spreadsheet before and a hack-job of a Word document to store email addresses. I've got pretty much all of the work done on form design and everything else but now I'm looking to maximize the usefulness of the data. I need to be able to do occasional mass-electronic mailing from queries but the problem I'm facing is having one field for e-mail addresses. A small number of volunteers has listed multiple email addresses in their information, and currently these multiple addresses are entered in the format: ; When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? |
#6
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
On May 26, 4:05*pm, "Jeff Boyce" wrote:
I think what you may have hit is the kind of a speed bump you create for yourself if you try to force Access to behave like Excel. Good luck! Regards Jeff Boyce Microsoft Office/Access MVP That's what I was thinking... cleaning up the mess is far more difficult than not making it in the first place... |
#7
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One field, multiple e-mail addresses - mail merge?
In message , Ryan P
writes When I go to do a mail-merge in Word 2003, it tells me Outlook does not recognize this format and skips over these records. I tried formating the addresses with comas separating them, but Word tells me to replace the comas with a semicolon. Ignore it. This is a data field not prose. Turn off spelling and grammar checking. Is there any way I can do this, or do I have to go through and create extra fields for extra e-mail addresses? The above fix might be enough but the extra table solution is a much cleaner way to fix it. -- Bernard Peek |
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