[AccessD] mail merge

Charlotte Foust cfoust at infostatsystems.com
Tue Aug 12 11:25:47 CDT 2003


Well, I created a system that was used for some years to prepare
documents to securitize loans.  That involved highly customized Word
templates with conditional fields in them (hey, this was around Office
6!) to handle the verbiage for specific counties/states/townships, etc.
I put the boilerplate and logic in to the Word docs and the fields that
triggered the condition into the merge file.  Is that any use to you?

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 7:41 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] mail merge


Charlotte,

this is a call center application for an insurance company.  They add
new claimants / claims, and then handle phone calls re the claim.  They
need the ability to do mail merge type stuff for a raft of documents
from various places in the program.  When a new claim is entered,
generate letters to the claimant / doctor / lawyer etc requesting more
information.  While handling the claim, generate letters to the claimant
/ employer / doctors etc. for various reasons.

My client is nailing down exactly where in the app they want to generate
the documents from, and in general I would expect a button / toolbar etc
which allows the user to generate a specific document or select from a
list of documents based upon what tab they are on in the app (which will
provide a PK for filtering a mail merge query).

As you can see, what they are doing will be custom defined, we will
write queries to grab the specific data required for the mail merge
letter, define a specific or a set of specific letters that can be
created from any specific place in the app.  The users of the system
don't want to have to leave the place they are entering data to "go
build a document".  They want to just say "send a letter to the current
claimant regarding the current claim, on this subject, with this
selected boiler plate inserted, and allow me to edit the letter, perhaps
in a specific place (paragraph).

All of that is simple enough until you get to the "selected boiler plate
inserted" kind of thing.  That requires a combo or something to allow
them to select boiler plate.

In addition, I am attempting to build upon a foundation of a table
driven mail merge system.  The system was built by someone else and I am
simply expanding on it (quite a bit).

This system allows the DBA to create mail merges in advance.  The DBA
selects a document from a directory on the disk, and an existing query
which will provide the data to the MM.  The MM Wizard then reads the
bookmarks out of the document into a combo and the fields of the query
into another combo. It then allows the DBA to match the bookmarks with
the fields of the query and write that information into a child table.
The MM Wizard also allows the DBA to select text attributes such as font
/ pitch / bold / underline etc for each bookmark insertion.

All of this ends up in a pair of tables:

Mail Merge Header - containing the information about the merge process
such as document name, query name, number of copies, duplex, etc. Mail
Merge Fields - containing information about the document bookmarks and
the matching query fields, as well as the formatting information for
each such pair.

It appears that I need to expand the system to include a boiler plate
table with a m-m child to this table as well as the mail merge header,
then allow bookmarks where the data is specifically selected boiler
plate, and for those fields pop up a form or something to allow them to
select the boiler plate related to a given letter.  Also a bookmark
which is specifically a user edit.  It seems like a useful thing to do,
just a bit outside of what I was doing already.

I was hoping somebody could tell me that they had encountered similar
requests and that they had resolved them by...

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Charlotte
Foust
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:00 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] mail merge


Are you trying to manage it from Access?  You might think about a Word
form and macros for some of the on-the-fly stuff, but even Word makes
you make your merge choices from a wizard unless you're hand-building
the merge document.  They can always edit the merged document if you
merge to a new document instead of directly to the printer.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 5:07 AM
To: AccessD
Subject: [AccessD] mail merge


My client wants to do mail merges where they can stop and edit the
letter, and also choose (on-the-fly) boiler plate text to be inserted in
the document.  I am building a wizard or code library to manage mail
merge but it seems that with these requirements I would need a form to
pop up to allow them to make selections.

Has anyone ever done this stuff?  How do you handle it?

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com


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