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,