I have decided to write an IT pack for teachers, covering things like how to log onto various services such as email, vle, content cache etc. One of the things I want to include is their usernames for each service. So, I thought the easiest way was to take my spreadsheet of usernames (in Open Office) and insert usernames into the correct spaces in the document (also in OO) using mail merge. Simple yes?

No. However, by a series of arcane incantations, reading out of date OO manuals and shouting at the computer, I have divined the sequence of operations that achieve this.

First of all you must ensure that the *full* open-office.org-base package is installed. This is not installed by default on Ubuntu and is not immediately obvious as there appears to be lots of database functionality available without it.

Then you can create your spreadsheet but make sure you save it as .sxc format so the information is accessible later.

Now you go to Writer to add the spreadsheet as a data source. There appear to be many options to add this (eg in the database options or via Exchange Databases in the Edit menu) but I found that all failed. Apart from one. The only time I could get Writer to add the spreadsheet as a data source was by attempting to add a field to the document (Insert -> Fields -> Other) and adding a new database. Interestingly after this step the spreadsheet appeared in the other database config windows that I tried above - go figure.

Ok next step is to go View -> Data Sources (if you don't have this option then you don't have the package discussed above installed), this brings up a view of your spreadsheet and you can simply drag and drop columns into your document leaving fields ready for merging.

Finally run the mail merge option and you have your document.

(The simplicity of these instructions belies the sheer hair pulling that accompanied their discovery)