Merge mailing lists and sort the result by last name

[JimBK]

Windows 7. LO version 5.1.6.2.

How can I merge two or more mailing lists built using LO CALC into one consolidated list?

Saw one suggestion on ‘Tech Republic’ saying ‘share’ the sheets, then click “Tools / Merge”. But in MY Tools drop-down menu there is no Merge option!

Tried “Insert / Object / OLE Object” but that option is greyed out in CALC for what I want to be the end result List (it is available in the list I am trying to add!).

In that same drop-down, I tried “Insert / Object / Chart from File” which brought some of the rows in, then wouldn’t add any more (“General OLE Error” - not very descriptive or helpful!!) It was as if the original sheet wasn’t big enough, but surely it just grows as it needs to?

On another Google search, I found “Edit / Compare Document”. I typed in the name of the second list, it asked to be “Accepted”, I clicked “Accept”, something got processed because wheels were turning - but no new names were added to the original list!

When I do somehow get them merged, I want to sort the rows by last name (Column B). I wanted to try this with the original list to see how it works. A suggestion which sounds pretty obvious was to click on ‘Data’ then select ‘Sort’.

Except the “Sort” option is greyed out and cannot be selected!

I confess to having very limited spread sheet experience, and a lot of the suggestions I’m running into seem to be about ‘defining ranges’, and other things I don’t understand. Merge different lists together; Sort the resultant merged list by Last Name. Doesn’t sound like it should be that difficult!!

Can anyone help?

I also apologize for the long post, which maybe is asking more than one question. But they are so related I was hoping for a simple answer.

Thank you all in advance!

Cheers,

Jim BK

[JohnD]

IF the mailing lists are built identically - same columns, ie first name, last name, address, city, state, etc.

How about opening both sheets, select all the entries in one, copy, then go to the other, go to the bottom entry +1 and paste the copied entries from the first sheet. Then select the entire new sheet and sort by Last Name.

If you screw up the newly pasted/sorted sheet just remember NOT to save it as the original name

[JimBK]

Hi John:

Thanks for the reply!

I tried that, and got an error message: “There is not enough space on the sheet to insert here.”

I tried copying 10 then 15 rows and Pasting those in until I had all of them from one of my ‘source’ mailing lists. That worked! So it seems there’s a limit on how much one can copy and paste at a time, which.

When I tried Data / Sort on that consolidated list, I stil had 'Sort" greyed out and not available, so I’m still stumped on that one.

Cheers,

Jim

[JimBK]

Well, I have half the answer myself! Turns out the spread sheets that I could not sort had been marked as ‘Record changes’ under the Edit/Track Changes’ tab. I never use this feature, so how they got marked thus I don’t know. Unchecking the ‘Record changes’ box eliminated the problem.

Still not sure how to ‘merge’ two lists though! But as noted above, I’m going through ‘Copy/Paste’-ing the rows ten to fifteen at a time. Laborious, but it’s working…

Cheers,

Jim

[JohnD]

Jim - Keep in mind that when you select all (Ctrl-A) you are selecting the WHOLE sheet - max rows and columns, even those with no data… That surely is too large to paste into another sheet. I tried selecting about 700 rows and that copy/pasted just fine.