Postcard Exchange Round 17 Comments and Feedback

[rst]

Hi all,

As in previous rounds, let us collect comments, feedback, being-late-announcements and my-cards-are-in-the-mail-messages in this thread.

As organizer I want to welcome all the people new to the exchange and I am glad about all the those known from previous rounds.

I hope this will be fun.

Cheers
Ruediger


Here is the list of participants again:

Allen Friday (MAX)
aluk (30)
Anke Drewitz (30)
bdial (MAX)
bkalafut (10)
Black Dog (MAX)
bpaties (30)
Buster6X6 (40)
bwakel (20)
BWKate (30)
charlotte (20)
Christopher Walrath (32)
cloudhands (25)
crispinuk (MAX)
drpsilver (MAX)
DrZish (30)
Eric Mac (25)
Fleath (MAX)
FotoGys (25)
Gennari (25)
gordrob (30)
hoffy (10)
johnnywalker (20)
Jon King (MAX)
jst (15)
Kraker (25)
KWhitmore (30)
labcoat (15)
lorirfrommontana (MAX)
markrewald (50)
MattKing (24)
mckenna (30)
Mick Fagan (MAX)
mike c (20)
Mike Wilde (30)
mooseontheloose (MAX)
OMU (20)
ozphoto (25)
paul_c5x4 (10)
Pete H (MAX)
Peter Markowski (30)
Rlibersky (30)
rmann (25)
Rob Skeoch (MAX)
Roger Bulcock (MAX)
rst (MAX)
rtbadman (MAX)
sly (MAX)
syzygy_moi (MAX)
Síle (MAX)
Tim Gray (MAX)
tocalosh (50)
Wayne Frederick (20)
Wolfgang Moersch (MAX)

[Christopher Walrath]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

I buy stamps. If my patience holds out, I mail on Friday.

[rtbadman]

Hi everyone, I received the address list today. Can anyone tell me how to import the "line notation" of the address list into Excel. I'm signed up for the max and am hoping I won't have to hand address my postcards.
Thanks, Roger

[Christopher Walrath]

Ah, that's part of the 'romance'. Spent an hour before work this morning doing just that.

[rtbadman]

Was that an hour hand addressing postcards or trying to import the address data into Excel?
Roger

[MattKing]

Originally Posted by rtbadman

Hi everyone, I received the address list today. Can anyone tell me how to import the "line notation" of the address list into Excel. I'm signed up for the max and am hoping I won't have to hand address my postcards.
Thanks, Roger

I don't use Excel, but I do use the mail merge functions in WordPerfect. I just use the search and replace functions to replace the semi-colons and line breaks with the appropriate field and record delimiters, and then copy the result into a data file.

Once you've done it once, you can re-use your work in subsequent exchanges.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[drpsilver]

02 June 2009

Originally Posted by rtbadman

Hi everyone, I received the address list today. Can anyone tell me how to import the "line notation" of the address list into Excel. I'm signed up for the max and am hoping I won't have to hand address my postcards.
Thanks, Roger

Rtbadman:

I do use MS Excel to create a data file fro MS Word "mail merge". What you need to do is the following ...

1. Copy the "line format" as a *.txt file using Notepad or like text editor.
2. Import this text file into Excel selecting semicolon [;] as the delimiter.
3. Format the text fields in Excel to what you want to use in your labels.
4. Copy this section of the Excel file into MS Word, and format as a table that can be used in the "mail merge" feature of Word.

Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions.

Regards,
Darwin

[rst]

Originally Posted by rtbadman

Hi everyone, I received the address list today. Can anyone tell me how to import the "line notation" of the address list into Excel. I'm signed up for the max and am hoping I won't have to hand address my postcards.

Hi Roger,

Like Matt, I also do not use Excel and to be honest, I never used it. I have once imported all the postcards addresses into my address book app on the Mac and use those to mail merge. For every round I have to check for address changes and to add the new addresses (20 new participants this round!).

But since it is installed on my work PC I just tried to import the data. Here is how it goes. To just import the address data into an Excel worksheet copy the line notation into a separate file. Use a real text editor for this and not a word processing program. I use Emacs on all operating systems I know. On Windows Notepad might be an option. Then in Excel go to menu 'Data'->'Get External Data'->'Import Text File' A file open dialog opens and you select the file containing the line notation. Press the 'Import' button. Now you end up in the 'Text Import Wizard': Select 'Delimited' and click 'Next'. On page two of the wizard select 'Semicolon' and deselect 'Tab'. You will see part of the file in the 'Preview' now already sorted into columns. Now click 'Finish' and Excel will ask you if it should open a new worksheet or if the data should be imported into the current worksheet. Do whatever is appropriate for you.

Hey and now I have found a simpler solution. Do a copy/paste of the line notation from your browser window into the existing Excel worksheet. So you end up having the data in multiple rows, but in only one column. Now select the column and go to 'Data'->'Text to Columns ...' You will end up in the same wizard as before now working on the column and not a file. Continue as above.

So now it is up to you how to handle the data in Excel.

Cheers
Rüdiger

[rst]

Ah, Darwin, you were faster than me. Anyway, I have the import described in more detail.

Cheers
Rüdiger

[Anke Drewitz]

I found an easier way, just copy the data from the browser and paste it into an Excel sheet, than you get the data in one column, select this column and then go to > data > text in columns; than select the Semicolon as seperator, voilá, text is in columns. So I'm not sure, since I'm using a german Excel, that you can find the same way, but I'm hopeful

Anke