Create Multiple Letters in Word Using Excel Data

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This is a long shot, but I don't know who else to ask. I have a Word document that has multiple iterations based on data in Excel. For instance, if the New_Client column in Excel has an X, you receive one of two paragraphs in the letter. There are other paragraphs that have three choices based on data in Excel. I cannot for the life of me figure out if this is possible using just Word and Excel. I've tried using if...then...else to choose paragraphs, but that is clunky at best. And because my paragraphs contain quotation marks and other formatting, it doesn't work like it should. I've tried creating new columns in my spreadsheet that literally contain the various paragraphs. That also "works" but not like I want it to. I want to be able to say to Mail Merge, or whatever, "Hey, this client is new, has a certain fee structure, and uses this service, please choose those paragraphs." Am I (actually its my bosses) crazy?

Hello @Holly-Deitz

I'm not sure if it's possible, but call me crazy, it sounds like a fun project. Would you mind sharing the spreadsheet you are using (sans the actual data, of course)? It would be helpful to see the header row and maybe a dummy data row or two?

@Holly-Deitz

I think this could be solved a few different ways...nested if statements and hlookups to name a couple. I didn't hear from you, so I made a few assumptions and came up with this.

For me, nested IF statements work better for this, but it really depends on your data. If you have a lot of options (there are only four in my example) an hlookup might be easier.

Sheet 1 in my Excel workbook is the list of contacts.

Sheet 2 has the possible paragraphs of text.

Column E on Sheet 1 has the nested IF statement. It looks at the values of columns C and D, and retrieves the appropriate paragraph from Sheet 2.

Then its just a standard mail merge using sheet 1.

I did it this way for two reasons. A mail merge needs all data on one sheet. Also, with this setup, I can edit the paragraphs on sheet 2 at any time, and I can add or update contacts on Sheet 1 and it will automatically change the paragraph selected.