Question newbie trying to create address labels from Access table.

[gardengal444]

I have an excel sheet with a subset of Client_IDs and ClientNames. THese are the subset customers getting Christmas cards. I have a typical database table with client info including the address info I need.

I need to ultimately create labels in Word. (Does Avery wizard install in Access or Excel? mine is only showing up in word.)

So, step 1, I created a query to gather all my pieces. Using Design View, I can only enter 9 ID numbers. Is that a Design View limit. In SQL View I could probably add all 82 ID's by hand I suppose. Is there some Access limit?

This is the SQL code so far:

SELECT t_Clients.FirstName, t_Clients.LastName, t_Clients.Client1, t_Clients.BillingAddress1, t_Clients.BillingTown, t_Clients.BillingState, t_Clients.BillingZipCode
FROM t_Clients
WHERE (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=43)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=566)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=1073)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=18)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=96)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=369)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=19)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=509)) OR (((t_Clients.Client_ID)=33));


Am I even going in the right direction? I am assuming that the Avery Wizard can access this query as a data source, but I've never actually done that before.

Should I first create a separate table of just the desired Client_IDs? and then what would I do with that to finish my query?

btw, this is Office 2003.

And I'm sure this is a very elementary exercise. I'm just in new territory so I could use some guidance to point me in the right direction.

 

[gardengal444]

I figured out most of it! I did create a separate table of the desired client_ids (only a dozen so far, just for prototype). And I managed to create a query that gets the address info just for those client_ids.

Yea!

I'm probably all set now. I assume the rest of the steps will fall out. And you're probably all laughing at how simple this was. But let me know if there's something I should still know about this task.

 

[ghudson]

I would suggest that you continue to store and update you contact listing in Access [forget Excel and Word]. Add a Yes/No field to your contacts table that designates if the contact is on your Christmas card list. Then adjust the criteria to your query to only pull in the contacts that have a Yes for the Christmas card field. This will simplify the process for future mailings. You can add a Yes/No field for any other special mailing purposes, etc.

FYI for your criteria:

Yes = -1
or
Yes = True

No = 0
or
No = False

 

[gardengal444]

I like that idea. As a matter of fact, I vaguely thought about such a column, but it seemed more time-consuming to do that (although a good investment for long-term). I also was afraid there might be concurrency issues without exclusive access to that table during the day. (this is a teeny shop.. no real production /development environment).

The other issue is that the person who decides the Christmas card list is not really DB-literate. She handed me an excel sheet that was formatted cosmetically and not programmatically at all. (id/name pairs spanning 3 fixed columns to fit on one view). She highlighted the clients who will get cards.

What kind of a UI could I generate for her for future subtractions or additions? a new field might need to interact with other new-client forms. I really can't touch existing stuff to generate these Christmas card labels. She initially thought I would just cut and paste 82 addresses by hand or something along those lines or fiddle with last years saved word labels (which are greatly different).

Btw, no matter how I rig up the tables or the query, I still need Word to actually generate the labels from the query, right? Access can't do labels or can it?

 

[ghudson]

You only need to add the one Yes/No field to the table to mark a record Yes/No if it gets a Christmas card.

Create a user GUI form to allow adding/editing/deleting the contacts address info. The user just needs to select a check box bound to the Yes/No field to determine if an address gets a Chritmas card.

Access can easily create the lables from your table/query. There is a report wizard for creating labels.

 

[Lightwave]

What kind of a UI could I generate for her for future subtractions or additions?

Pretty much only limited by your imagination and skill.

Have a go within the form wizard and see what happens. You will quickly realise the flexibility and probably quickly have many more questions too.

 

[Lightwave]

Here's a very quick introduction to how to start designing a form which is Access's name for a GUI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPZDb3JEes&feature=related