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#1
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Mail merge with nested forms
I have old wordperfect merge documents in which I need to convert to WORD but
am having trouble finding the correct commands to do so. Can anyone help or steer me to documentation that can help with . I have a conditional statement that looks at a data field to determine which letter to merge. Then within the selected document I have conditions that look at a data field to merge specific text from another. can this field look at another lookup file? Here are examples from Word perfect If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Thanks for any help! |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Mail merge with nested forms
On the whole Word mailmerge is so different (and less powerful, as I
understand it) compared to WordPerfect merge that it's advisable to avoid trying to translate, feature for feature. Better to try to understand what Word can and cannot do, and redesign. FWIW I do not know of any articles designed to help people porting from WP. If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif In this case you /might/ be able to do something like { IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever1 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc1.doc" }" "{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever2 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc2.doc" }" "Bad Data" }" } (Sorry, I don't know enough about WP merge to be sure.) However, the included documents would not be "forms" in any sense usually used in Word - just more text and fields, and only the document you actually start the merge with is attached to a data source - you can't change sources in the middle of the merge. Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Again, you can for example use INCLUDETEXT to include text from a boomarked part of a document, so if you know that a bookmark named x (which yoiu can set using a { SET } field contains abc, def or ghi, you can have bookmarks abc, def, and ghi in a file called "c:\myincludes\i.doc" and use { INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myincludes\\i.doc" { REF x } } to get the relevant chunk from i.doc. And so on... Peter Jamieson "KP" wrote in message ... I have old wordperfect merge documents in which I need to convert to WORD but am having trouble finding the correct commands to do so. Can anyone help or steer me to documentation that can help with . I have a conditional statement that looks at a data field to determine which letter to merge. Then within the selected document I have conditions that look at a data field to merge specific text from another. can this field look at another lookup file? Here are examples from Word perfect If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Thanks for any help! |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Mail merge with nested forms
Ditto. I'm in the same predicament. WP merge commands are so wonderful and
powerful. I'm assuming there must be a way with Word commands or VB that should be as powerful, if not moreso, than WP. Can anyone point us in the right direction? Kathy "Peter Jamieson" wrote in message ... On the whole Word mailmerge is so different (and less powerful, as I understand it) compared to WordPerfect merge that it's advisable to avoid trying to translate, feature for feature. Better to try to understand what Word can and cannot do, and redesign. FWIW I do not know of any articles designed to help people porting from WP. If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif In this case you /might/ be able to do something like { IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever1 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc1.doc" }" "{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever2 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc2.doc" }" "Bad Data" }" } (Sorry, I don't know enough about WP merge to be sure.) However, the included documents would not be "forms" in any sense usually used in Word - just more text and fields, and only the document you actually start the merge with is attached to a data source - you can't change sources in the middle of the merge. Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Again, you can for example use INCLUDETEXT to include text from a boomarked part of a document, so if you know that a bookmark named x (which yoiu can set using a { SET } field contains abc, def or ghi, you can have bookmarks abc, def, and ghi in a file called "c:\myincludes\i.doc" and use { INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myincludes\\i.doc" { REF x } } to get the relevant chunk from i.doc. And so on... Peter Jamieson "KP" wrote in message ... I have old wordperfect merge documents in which I need to convert to WORD but am having trouble finding the correct commands to do so. Can anyone help or steer me to documentation that can help with . I have a conditional statement that looks at a data field to determine which letter to merge. Then within the selected document I have conditions that look at a data field to merge specific text from another. can this field look at another lookup file? Here are examples from Word perfect If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Thanks for any help! |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Mail merge with nested forms
I'm assuming there must be a way with Word commands
Not really. Word's built-in merge features are limited in several important ways, e.g. a. you can only use one "data source". You can't switch data sources or pull in new ones as you go along. You can INCLUDETEXT stuff, and you can use DATABASE fields to pull in other material, but in quite limited ways. b. that data source has got to have a tabular structure - the sort of thing you would expect to retrieve as the result of any normal SQL query. It can't, for example, be an XML file with lots of variations as to what can be in each "record". It's as if its designers thought this kind of lmited tabular data structure was the only format in town. c. Word's "field language" suffers from many inconsistencies and other shortcomings, some of which vary between versions of Word. As one example, "automatic suppression of blank lines" where you have a blank field works fine in Word 2000, but not in Word 2002/2003 if the field is embedded in another field such as an IF or an INCLUDETEXT field; a construct such as { IF condition "{ INCLUDETEXT something }" } may not work during a merge whereas { INCLUDETEXT { IF condition "this file" "That file" } } generally will. There are, I think 3 ways you can attempt to control merge better: d. use VBA to merge one record at a time. That lets you modify your main document before processing each record, lets you output individual documents for each data source record, and other stuff, while still using Word's data source connection features to hide some of the nasty details of getting data from different types of data source. You'll find examples of this kind of thing in some of my messages in this group. However, you still have to pull in your own data if you wanted more than one source, and in my experience it is not simple to extend this method to situations where each document is formed from multiple records in the data source. e. use VBA with Word's Mail Merge events. This is the "official" way to do (d), and has some advantages, but not a lot. f. in essence, if you want /complete/ control over the merge, you have to "roll your own merge" in VBA (or VB.NET/C#.NET, if that's your thing). You do your own data connections, insert your own chunks of document for each record or piece of data you want to process, and so on. Typically you should probably avoid { MAILMERGE } fields and either insert data directly into the document using VBA or use { DOCVARIABLE } fields to make it easier. But in this case even more than the other two, you probably aren't going to be able to let users maintain these applications themselves, unless you restrict what they are allowed to do quite severely. In Word 2003/2007 you can also consider developing an application that uses code to generate WordML documents. However, in my view that is even more of a "Programmer's" approach to the task. I tried some of this in WOrd 2003 and it's pretty hard. It may be much simpler in Word 2007 with Visual Studio.NET, but I really don't know. Sorry I can't give you any useful links. Peter Jamieson "Kathy Webster" wrote in message nk.net... Ditto. I'm in the same predicament. WP merge commands are so wonderful and powerful. I'm assuming there must be a way with Word commands or VB that should be as powerful, if not moreso, than WP. Can anyone point us in the right direction? Kathy "Peter Jamieson" wrote in message ... On the whole Word mailmerge is so different (and less powerful, as I understand it) compared to WordPerfect merge that it's advisable to avoid trying to translate, feature for feature. Better to try to understand what Word can and cannot do, and redesign. FWIW I do not know of any articles designed to help people porting from WP. If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif In this case you /might/ be able to do something like { IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever1 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc1.doc" }" "{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD whatever2 }" = "x" "{ INCLUDETEXT "pathname of doc2.doc" }" "Bad Data" }" } (Sorry, I don't know enough about WP merge to be sure.) However, the included documents would not be "forms" in any sense usually used in Word - just more text and fields, and only the document you actually start the merge with is attached to a data source - you can't change sources in the middle of the merge. Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Again, you can for example use INCLUDETEXT to include text from a boomarked part of a document, so if you know that a bookmark named x (which yoiu can set using a { SET } field contains abc, def or ghi, you can have bookmarks abc, def, and ghi in a file called "c:\myincludes\i.doc" and use { INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myincludes\\i.doc" { REF x } } to get the relevant chunk from i.doc. And so on... Peter Jamieson "KP" wrote in message ... I have old wordperfect merge documents in which I need to convert to WORD but am having trouble finding the correct commands to do so. Can anyone help or steer me to documentation that can help with . I have a conditional statement that looks at a data field to determine which letter to merge. Then within the selected document I have conditions that look at a data field to merge specific text from another. can this field look at another lookup file? Here are examples from Word perfect If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc1) else If field (fieldname)='x' nestform(new merge doc2) else "Bad Data" endif Next, within doc 1 & 2 there are mergefields that look at a code and need to return a value from a different table look up file that inserts verbage corresponding to code. Thanks for any help! |
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