What WordStar 3.01 can do in Mail Merge that Pages '09 can't.

I have a Bento database. I want to print contra dances from it on 3x5 index cards. I can save the database as a Numbers worksheet with all the data I want on it. I SHOULD be able to use the fields from that Numbers file to create a Pages document that merges, using that data, to print on the index cards.
Meanwhile, Apple apparently thinks that addresses are the only kind of data anybody could ever want to merge in a document. This is a stupid limit. Your programmers are unnecessarily standing between me and a reasonable expectation of what your software ought to do.
I could do this in WordStar in the mid 1980s on a Commodore 128 running CP/M. I could do it in WordPerfect under DOS. I can do it in Word in Windows, and I HATE Windows.
Why can't I do it in Pages on my Mac?

Sarris2 wrote:
I hacked my way to the answer before reading your good advice. I see three problems here:
1. As you say, the tutorial materials are vague and fail to explain how the feature works or how to get to the feature.
Agreed
2. The "Edit:Merge" menu option is greyed out until you add a Merge Field, so you can't connect to a Numbers data source until AFTER you have chosen your first Merge field, which presumes you are using the address book, so the first field has to be an Address Book field even if the eventual document doesn't have any Address Book fields in it.
No.
Have you tried my instructions?
All you need is a Numbers spreadsheet with the appropriate headers in it. Link to that and then you can merge to those revealed headers.
3. There is apparently a "magic number" bug in Mail Merge in Pages. Since I couldn't connect to a data source until after inserting the first Address Book field and I was working with bad advice from the tutorial, I inserted 14 fields, creating my own cross-reference table in a separate document to tell me which Address Book Field to map each Numbers file Merge Field to.
Again, why are you insisting on barking up the wrong tree, and arguing with the koalas that they aren't pandas?
When I actually got around to mapping the fields, I hit the magic number 13 and instead of seeing Numbers fields to map to, I saw Address Book fields again. I tried deleting the field and creating a new one and got a repeat of the Edit:Merge window now pointing to the Address Book. When I once again pointed it to the Numbers file, all the fields I had mapped changed their names to the actual Numbers fields, and when I went to create the new field, the list of choices were from the Numbers file instead of the Address Book.
Haven't a clue what this is supposed to mean, and why you are still futzing about in Address Book.
So, I got what I wanted, though I wasted a lot of time unnecessarily using Address Book fields and remapping them to the Numbers fields, and I'm still hampered by the lack of Conditional Merge Fields. From Bento, I have a field named "Becket" that has either a "0" or a "1". I'd like to type the word "Becket" on the card if it is "1" and not type anything if it is "0". I could do that in Wordstar, etc.
Why?
It seems that in Pages, I have to tweak the data itself, wrestling with Numbers to replace all "1"s in that column with "Becket" and replace all the "0"s with empty cells. It's a lot more of a tedious process in Numbers than it would be if I just had a conditional Merge field.
Can't follow what this has to do with a simple merge which is where you started.
Peter

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    mezzaluna wrote:
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    qgirl7 wrote:
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