Anyone know how to make up a mailing list ?

[Band_Member]

I run a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization and recently got the county property tax info on a cd from the county. In the past I've done it manually which is a real PITA.

Does anyone know if there is a program to convert CSV (comma seperated values) into a mailing list or any other way to do it ?

Thanks in advance.

[yaric008]

You can open the file up in excel and minuplate it into rows. That'd probably help. When you open it choose the delimited option and then choose comma wherever that is...

[SmokeyWren]

Years and years ago I was a dBase guru. Yes, I could take a comma delimited or ASCII SDF file and suck it into a dBase database, then write a very short program and have a mailing list in any order you wanted - last name, city, state, zipper, whatever.

I could probably still do it with dBase V for DOS, but there are more modern databases available today. Microsoft Access? So I'm sure that anybody familiar with a good PC-based database program can do exactly what you're needing done, and in a graphical user interface (GUI) such as Windows instead of my old MS-DOS.

I'm not a spreadsheet person. If I had the info in a spreadsheat, I'd kick it out as an SDF file, then suck the SDF file into a database so I could format and print reports from the database, such as a mailing list or an envelope addressing or label printing routine. I suspect a good spreadsheet person could do something similar with spreadsheet software, but I was always into using the much more powerful dBase database software.

Yes, I did that stuff for a living for lots of years. But I retired in 1992 and haven't written more than a few personal apps since then.

And yes, I'm older than dirt.

ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange. You younger folks might think of it as a font.

SDF = standard data format, which is fixed columns such as a telephone book. Where, for example, columns 1 thru 20 are name, 21 thru 35 are address, 36 thru 50 are city. 51 and 52 are state, etc.

Most computer systems can produce an ASCII file in SDF. In my world, I took ASCII SDF data files from mainframes and sucked them into PCs for further processing.

Comma seperated values (CSV) files, or what we called comma delimited files, are similar to SDF files except fields are seperated by commas instead of being in an exact position in the file. One comma can replace several blanks, so the CSV files take up less disk space than SDF files. Disk space is dirt cheap today, but back 40 or 50 years ago it was very expensive, so lots of computer systems stored data in CSV files instead of SDF files.

[DieselDennis]

What I would do in your situation:

I'd take the .csv file you have now and open it up on Microsoft Excel. You may have to click OK a few times, but it should do this. You might have to then go in and add some column headings so you (and Microsoft) can understand everything.

Then I'd open up Microsoft Word and click Tools in the menu bar and go down to Mail Merge. From there, you should be able to follow enough steps to where you've generated yourself a large grid of names & addresses.

And if you want to take it a step further, you can go buy a sheet of blank lablels and stick them in your printer. Then when it says paper type, just select the brand and type of labels you have. When it prints you should have a named and addressed label that is ready to apply (manually) to some envelope or letter.

[Band_Member]

Thanks for the replies so far they are much appreciated.

Now I'm just waiting for an opportunity to get the new data from the county on a cd before I give this a shot.

Any other input is also greatly appreciated.