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#1
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me:
I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#2
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Hi JAnderson,
You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#3
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my
database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#4
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional
statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#5
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is
formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#6
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Hi JAnderson,
I think you'll get the results you're after if you make the first character of each of the 'animal' documents a continuous Section break and if you insert a continuous Section break in your mailmerge document after the mergefields also. Alternatively, if you want each of the 'animal' documents to start on a new page, and the mailmerge document to resume on a new page after that, make the section breaks 'next page'. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#7
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Ok, we're definitely getting closer - thank you! I did what you suggested by
placing a continuous section break at the beginning of my 'animal' documents, and placed a section break after my INCLUDETEXT field. Two problems: 1) Some of my 'animal' documents have multiple section breaks within the document (separate footers, etc.). I'm not sure how this is affecting the resulting document. 2) My resulting merged document only retains the correct formatting for the first page, then reverts to the default formatting of the 'primary/host' document. Furthermore, all text and headers/footers are shifted partially off the visible area of the page (these are not unusual documents, just text and some tables within the printable margins of a page). I'm encouraged by the results so far; I really want to get to the point where my INCLUDETEXT field can LITERALLY pull the entire document. All mergefields within the INCLUDETEXT document are merging correctly, thankfully. Any ideas why the formatting doesn't 'stick' on these documents? What about adding a field switch to the INCLUDETEXT field, like *Charformat or something? "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, I think you'll get the results you're after if you make the first character of each of the 'animal' documents a continuous Section break and if you insert a continuous Section break in your mailmerge document after the mergefields also. Alternatively, if you want each of the 'animal' documents to start on a new page, and the mailmerge document to resume on a new page after that, make the section breaks 'next page'. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
#8
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Hi JAnderson,
Provided your: .. source document (ie the one referenced by the INCLUDETEXT field) starts off with a Section break; and .. target document (ie your mailmerge main document) has a Section break after the mergefields, I don't believe the Section breaks in the source document will have any effect on the target document outside of those Section breaks. As for the partial shifting, are you sure the source and target documents have the same page formats (eg A4)? -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ok, we're definitely getting closer - thank you! I did what you suggested by placing a continuous section break at the beginning of my 'animal' documents, and placed a section break after my INCLUDETEXT field. Two problems: 1) Some of my 'animal' documents have multiple section breaks within the document (separate footers, etc.). I'm not sure how this is affecting the resulting document. 2) My resulting merged document only retains the correct formatting for the first page, then reverts to the default formatting of the 'primary/host' document. Furthermore, all text and headers/footers are shifted partially off the visible area of the page (these are not unusual documents, just text and some tables within the printable margins of a page). I'm encouraged by the results so far; I really want to get to the point where my INCLUDETEXT field can LITERALLY pull the entire document. All mergefields within the INCLUDETEXT document are merging correctly, thankfully. Any ideas why the formatting doesn't 'stick' on these documents? What about adding a field switch to the INCLUDETEXT field, like *Charformat or something? "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, I think you'll get the results you're after if you make the first character of each of the 'animal' documents a continuous Section break and if you insert a continuous Section break in your mailmerge document after the mergefields also. Alternatively, if you want each of the 'animal' documents to start on a new page, and the mailmerge document to resume on a new page after that, make the section breaks 'next page'. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
From what you're describing, what I'm doing should work perfectly, you're
right. The best way I can describe what is going on is that only the first page of my final product seems to observe the formatting; all remaining pages revert to the target document's default settings. Furthermore, the text from the source document does not line up with the indent arrows - instead it falls off to the left of the page. It's very unusual. The same thing happens with the header and footer on all pages after the first page. Do you think I should try a section break at the beginning AND end of the source documents? I'm SO close, I feel like I'm just missing one step. Thanks again for all of your help, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, Provided your: .. source document (ie the one referenced by the INCLUDETEXT field) starts off with a Section break; and .. target document (ie your mailmerge main document) has a Section break after the mergefields, I don't believe the Section breaks in the source document will have any effect on the target document outside of those Section breaks. As for the partial shifting, are you sure the source and target documents have the same page formats (eg A4)? -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ok, we're definitely getting closer - thank you! I did what you suggested by placing a continuous section break at the beginning of my 'animal' documents, and placed a section break after my INCLUDETEXT field. Two problems: 1) Some of my 'animal' documents have multiple section breaks within the document (separate footers, etc.). I'm not sure how this is affecting the resulting document. 2) My resulting merged document only retains the correct formatting for the first page, then reverts to the default formatting of the 'primary/host' document. Furthermore, all text and headers/footers are shifted partially off the visible area of the page (these are not unusual documents, just text and some tables within the printable margins of a page). I'm encouraged by the results so far; I really want to get to the point where my INCLUDETEXT field can LITERALLY pull the entire document. All mergefields within the INCLUDETEXT document are merging correctly, thankfully. Any ideas why the formatting doesn't 'stick' on these documents? What about adding a field switch to the INCLUDETEXT field, like *Charformat or something? "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, I think you'll get the results you're after if you make the first character of each of the 'animal' documents a continuous Section break and if you insert a continuous Section break in your mailmerge document after the mergefields also. Alternatively, if you want each of the 'animal' documents to start on a new page, and the mailmerge document to resume on a new page after that, make the section breaks 'next page'. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
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Mergefields, IF statements and section breaks
Hi JAnderson,
The symptoms you're describing suggest the source document has a different paper size than the target document. As for indents & tabs, are you sure they're defined using the same defaults for both the source and target documents? Do you think I should try a section break at the beginning AND end of the source documents? Wouldn't hurt, especially if that Section break reverts the page layout settings to those used in the target document. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... From what you're describing, what I'm doing should work perfectly, you're right. The best way I can describe what is going on is that only the first page of my final product seems to observe the formatting; all remaining pages revert to the target document's default settings. Furthermore, the text from the source document does not line up with the indent arrows - instead it falls off to the left of the page. It's very unusual. The same thing happens with the header and footer on all pages after the first page. Do you think I should try a section break at the beginning AND end of the source documents? I'm SO close, I feel like I'm just missing one step. Thanks again for all of your help, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, Provided your: .. source document (ie the one referenced by the INCLUDETEXT field) starts off with a Section break; and .. target document (ie your mailmerge main document) has a Section break after the mergefields, I don't believe the Section breaks in the source document will have any effect on the target document outside of those Section breaks. As for the partial shifting, are you sure the source and target documents have the same page formats (eg A4)? -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ok, we're definitely getting closer - thank you! I did what you suggested by placing a continuous section break at the beginning of my 'animal' documents, and placed a section break after my INCLUDETEXT field. Two problems: 1) Some of my 'animal' documents have multiple section breaks within the document (separate footers, etc.). I'm not sure how this is affecting the resulting document. 2) My resulting merged document only retains the correct formatting for the first page, then reverts to the default formatting of the 'primary/host' document. Furthermore, all text and headers/footers are shifted partially off the visible area of the page (these are not unusual documents, just text and some tables within the printable margins of a page). I'm encouraged by the results so far; I really want to get to the point where my INCLUDETEXT field can LITERALLY pull the entire document. All mergefields within the INCLUDETEXT document are merging correctly, thankfully. Any ideas why the formatting doesn't 'stick' on these documents? What about adding a field switch to the INCLUDETEXT field, like *Charformat or something? "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, I think you'll get the results you're after if you make the first character of each of the 'animal' documents a continuous Section break and if you insert a continuous Section break in your mailmerge document after the mergefields also. Alternatively, if you want each of the 'animal' documents to start on a new page, and the mailmerge document to resume on a new page after that, make the section breaks 'next page'. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message ... Ah, that makes sense, thank you. It looks like the last of my problems is formatting. Each of my documents has different page setup dimensions (margins, header/footer, etc.), by they seem to take on that of the main "host" document, rather than keeping their original formatting. I can't think of a way around this, but everything else is looking pretty good. Any ideas? Thanks as always, "Graham Mayor" wrote: The point of the exercise was that you don't need the conditional statements. The Includetext field inserts the appropriate document. And yes you can put mergefields in the included documents and they will work provided they match the fields in your data source. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JAnderson wrote: Hmm... So could I still use conditional statements with INCLUDETEXT? If my database record is 'zebra', I only want my zebra document to show. Also, would includetext retain formatting? It's important that I keep margins, footers, and text formatting in a certain way. Lastly, can INCLUDETEXT also accommodate mergefields? For example, inside my zebra document are mergefields like 'zoo name' 'zoo address' 'zoo city', etc., which merge from my database. This works inside IF statements, but I wonder if it would with INCLUDETEXT... Thanks, "macropod" wrote: Hi JAnderson, You'd probably get better results by creating a separate reference document for each scenario, then embedding your MERGEFIELD within an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to the folder where those documents can be found. For example, suppose your refrence documents are in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals and you have a series of files (eg Bear.doc, Zebra.doc, etc) in that folder. In that case you could use an INCLUDETEXT field coded as: {INCLUDETEXT "C:\\My Documents\\Animals\\{MERGEFIELD ANIMAL}.doc"} Now, if you add a new 'Animal' to your database, all you need to do is to create a corresponding reference document for it in the folder C:\My Documents\Animals. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "JAnderson" wrote in message news Ok, this is a somewhat complicated one, so bear with me: I have a large document where each page is an "IF" statement followed by a next-page section break. Let's pretend that I'm using the merge field "Animal" as my condition: {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "BEAR" " Document relating to bears More text, formatting of 0.5" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} {IF{MERGEFIELD_ANIMAL}= "ZEBRA" " Document relating to zebras More text, formatting of 1" margins More text ---section break (next page)--- " ""} BEGIN REGULAR 2-PAGE DOCUMENT More text, 1.2" margins More text End of document Thus, if the condition "Bear" is met, then a document relating to bears will become part of my document, otherwise, nothing happens (the false condition is ""). Likewise, if "Zebra" is the value of the field, then a document about zebras appears. Under any condition, however, my "regular" document is always part of the merge (say, a fact sheet about zoo animals). This method, while potentially inelegant, works for our specific needs, and works without any problems. However, there becomes a point where inserting one more "IF" statement will "break" the whole document. Say I realize that I need to add yet another document about Lions, so I follow the formatting above and enter this Lion IF statement right after the zebra IF statement. For some reason, headers, footers and margins (section break qualities) will not be correct for whatever document I merge, and sometimes the "next page" section breaks will reorient themselves as "continuous", thus melding pages together. I'm a bit stuck at this point, because I can't understand why, if a section break is within an IF statement, it would later become functional even though its condition is not met. Would it be more effective if, every time I added a new IF statement, I re-built the whole document starting with "Bear", then "Zebra", then "Lion", then "Regular document"? Is this just a lost cause? (The reason I am insistent on doing it this way is because, on a grander scale, I do not want to have hundreds of individual documents to use for merging data; I would prefer to have one 'master' document.) Thanks in advance, |
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