Each district has a custom map of resources. Y'see, our reports don't just have text-based data. Easy-peasy, right?Īh! But there's a complication (Isn't there always?).
You create a spreadsheet with all the data you want to include in each report, you create a Word document with embedded mail merge fields from the spreadsheet, then you run the mail merge and it automagically creates all the documents (or district reports in our case) you need. If you're familiar with Mail Merge in Microsoft Word and Excel, this is a relatively easy task. For example, if you're the Texas Senator for district 22, we want to give you a page full of information about district 22. We want to take that data and print a custom one-page report of Veteran population and services for each Texas representative's district, specific to that rep's district. We have up-to-date data for Veteran population and services for every House and Senate district in Texas. If you want to learn something technical, read on! This is about how I learned to use Mail Merge in Microsoft Word to embed a unique image for each mail merged entity. If you're looking for Vet-related stuff, you'll likely prefer to read something else. A heads-up: This doesn't really pertain to Veterans.
