sorry for the double post, but here goes:
Okay, I'm sharing two files here: One Excel spreadsheet and one Publisher template.
Here is the Excel template:
I started with the csv that you can get from your ward website via lds.org. The reason I used this instead of the exported data from MLS is beause it is one family per line instead of one individual per line.
So, start with the csv data and modify it a little to make it formatted like this example. The main changes you'll make are adding ampersands to wives, commas to children, and filenames for family pictures. The pictures will look best if the aspect ratio is 3x4 (I used the MS Office Picture Manager to do that).
Next, here is the Publisher template:
This uses Microsoft Publisher's Catalog Merge Wizard to push the Excel data and the pictures into a 'catalog'.
I cram a lot of stuff in there. My goal was to make it more compact. The year before I did it, the folks put six families per page -- I do fourteen. So there are some funny situations:
* I only allow folks to have two phone numbers OR kids. not both
* if they have _lots_ of kids, I only allow one email address.
I tried to make examples for these in my example spreadsheet.
The final product looks somewhat like this (I blurred it to protect my fellow ward members):
(Attachment no longer available)
I add a few more pages with stuff like:
* ward leadership: names and phone numbers
* contact info for stake, family history center, institute
* temple info, hours, etc.
* addresses of missionaries from the ward
When you print it out, Publisher is smart enough to arrange the pages correctly to print 'a' families on the same page as 'z' since this forms a folded booklet style directory.
I am happy to answer any questions. I hope it is useful.
Jonny Sweeny
jsweeny@iu.edu