Charlotte Foust
cfoust at infostatsystems.com
Tue Aug 12 12:35:24 CDT 2003
This was a long time ago, but yes. I had fields in the document template that used conditional tests, like an IIF to determine which boilerplate to display in some sections. The test was based on a merge field value. So, it the state was Pennsylvania and the County was whatever, then the language was different from the other counties for that state. I built standard templates that met each state's requirements and then customized them for county, township, whatever with conditional fields. When I ran a mailmerge, I based the new document on the appropriate template and passed it the field values it needed to determine which county, or whatever, it was so the document could morph itself. So if we had a dozen loans to securitize in a particular state, the legal documents accompanying each loan could be produced in a single mail merge even though the details and language differed between loans. As an alternative, you could pass the boilerplate in the mergefile in separate fields and determine which field to use with a conditional test. You could build yourself a wizard wizard, I suppose, to let them customize their templates themselves. I never went that far. They called me for years when they needed a language change or they had managed to zap a template completely. Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 9:21 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] mail merge Tell me about the "boilerplate and logic in the doc". Are you saying that you have boilerplate hidden in the doc and unhide it? That sounds useful as well. 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 12:26 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] mail merge 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 _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com