KobusP

Excuse me if this is a stupid question from a newbie. I'm trying to find a solution for a mail merge problem. Basically I want to use mail merge to create output from various templates. That in itself is not the challenge. What makes it unique, is that the first field of each data rows provides the name of the template to use, e.g.

Template-1, Data, Data, Data
Template-2, Data, Data, Data
Template-1, Data, Data, Data
Template-1, Data, Data, Data
Template-3, Data, Data, Data

Any template may appear from 0 to n times, in any sequence. In addition, all of the pages generated should end up in a single document. The number of rows in a datafile may be anywhere from 1 to tens of thousands. Also, the number of templates may be in the hundreds. And the templates MUST be used in the sequence they are provided in the data file.

Any suggestions how to go about solving the problem in Office 2003 or Office 2007?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

macropod

Hi KobusP,

You can do this by embedding your 'template' mergefield in an INCLUDETEXT field. To do this in your Word mailmerge main document:
. press Ctrl-F9 and type 'INCLUDTEXT ""' between the field braces, so that you end up with {INCLUDTEXT ""}
. insert your 'template' mergefield between the double quotes, so that you get {INCLUDTEXT "«Template»"}, where 'Template' is the actual name of your mergefield.
. If your 'template' mergefield doesn't include the path to the templates, insert it ahead of the «Template» mergefield (eg {INCLUDTEXT "C:\\Kobus\\Documents\\«Template»"}. Note the double backslashes for the path separators. Add '.doc' or' docx'after the «Template» mergefield, as appropriate, if that field doesn't include the filename's extension.
. run your mailmerge.

An alternative would be to use a series of IF fields to control the display/supression of the various templates within the main mailmerge document itself. You could code such a field along the lines of:
{IF«Template»= "Template-1" "Text & mergefields for template 1"}{IF«Template»= "Template-2" "Text & mergefields for template 2"}{IF«Template»= "Template-3" "Text & mergefields for template 3"}, etc, all on one logical line. The text & mergefields for each template generated this way can include as many paragraphs & whatever formatting you need.

Note: The field brace pairs (ie '{ }') for the above fields must be created via Ctrl-F9 - you can't simply type them or copy & paste them from this message. Likwise, you can't type the chevrons (ie '« »') - they're part of the actual mergefields, which you can insert from the mailmerge toolbar.

KobusP

Thanks for the quick response, I'll try it out ASAP.

KobusP

Thanks, the first option worked liked a charm.

Just one interesting observation:
If I use the method you've described (CTRL F9, etc) to create the INCLUDETEXT field, the merge works perfectly. I can however not see the INCLUDETEXT field ever on my Driver template. I can blindly right-click and 'Toggle field codes', which will then display the INCLUDETEXT.

If I use the INSERT -> Field route through the Menu bar, I can see the INCLUDETEXT field afterwards as an 'Error! Not a valid filename'. The merge still works however.

macropod

Hi KobusP,

You should only ever need to toggle the field code display once - which you can do via Alt-F9.

The errors via Insert|Field are probably due to the absence of a valid filename (where the «Template» mergefield goes) in the INCLUDETEXT field. I wouldn't be surprised to see this if you had the field code display toggled off when creating the fields manually, were you to update them via F9.