Welcome! We’ve designed these pages as a primer about creating document templates for our MailMerger service. You won’t find it a great deal of use in any other context, I’m afraid. But, if that’s what you were expecting, then please read on and enjoy...
Ready to get started? Before we do, you will need access to one of these standard Word Processors in order to follow the instructions given in this document and author your own templates...
In order to work correctly in your template, fields must be named to correspond with the data that will be sent for mail merging. If you control the application holding the data, or at least have the ability to extract data from it, this might not present any problems. Otherwise, you will need to collaborate with your system supplier or IT staff to obtain a list of possible fields. MailMerger can accept data in a number of formats. Two of the most common, CSV and XML, are considered here...
Many templates have a need to present repeating data. Examples might include a list of items ordered from a store, a history of activity, etc... Often the precise number of entries in such lists will vary from case to case. MailMerger’s repeating groups facility makes it possible to handle this situation...
A common requirement of templates is to vary the output content based upon the data being merged. For example, a sentence on payment options might need to be included on an order acknowledgement, but ONLY if the customer has not already paid online. MailMerger provides the «!if()» and «!endIf» field codes for this...
Okay, now for something really cool! As well as bringing in your variable data during a mail merge, MailMerger can actually insert other templates. It achieves this magic through a special field code; insertFile() . You use it like this...
MailMerger provides a powerful formatting function for handling dates and times. It is used as a field code as per this example (see section 3.5 for details on how to insert field codes): «letterdate \dateTime-dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss» Here are some of the more common codes that can be used after the hyphen (-), there are many other possibilities...
MailMerger lets you create templates that bleed to the edge of the page - simply zero your margins in Word. However, you need to remember that the vast majority of printers will not let you print right to the edge of the paper. If you could, you would end up with toner splashed around the innards of the machine which is probably not good! So remember to factor into your design the inevitable margin...
To use your newly created template, you need to upload it to MailMerger - follow these steps: Login at the MailMerger Dashboard with your username and password; Go to the Templates tab of the Dashboard; Go to the Upload Templates section of the page, and click the Browse button - this will let you navigate around your folders to allow you to find and highlight the template to upload - click Open...
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