Mail merge question re: If Statements

  • Thread starter Thread starter JAnderson
  • Start date Start date
J

JAnderson

I'll try to be clear here. Two questions.

1) I want a boolean operator in an IF statement, is this possible? Example:

{if{MERGEFIELD "MAT_Movie"}= “Rain*†"(true)" "(false)"}

I want to catch all fields that begin with "Rain", such as "Rainy" "Rain
Man", etc.

2) THEN, for the true condition, I want to have an entire formatted page
appear (such as a generic order form). If false, I'd like to leave it blank
and NOT include the order form. Can I just paste the entire page I want into
the true condition "" quotes? Otherwise, would I have to reference a file to
import at that space?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
 
With a couple of minor provisos this will work.
1. Don't use smart quotes in the search string
2. Convert the result to lower case to be sure of catching all.
3. You can either paste the whole page between the quotes where you have
"(true)" or use an includetext field (as shown) or autotext field.

{ IF{ Mergefield MAT_Movie \*Lower} = "rain*" "{ INCLUDETEXT
"C:\\PATH\\DOCUMENT.DOC"}" "" }

Use CTRL+F9 for each field bracket pair.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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That is VERY helpful, thank you. Now, if I use the INCLUDETEXT function,
will it bring in the entire document's formatting, or just the literal text
itself? I searched online for a long time and couldn't figure that part out.

Thanks again for all the help!
 
If you add a mergeformat switch eg

{ IF{ Mergefield MAT_Movie \*Lower} = "rain*" "{ INCLUDETEXT
"C:\\PATH\\DOCUMENT.DOC" \*Mergeformat}" "" }

it will make a fair stab at inserting the original document c/w header
footer information, however it will not insert the original documents
margins and if the styles used in the inserted document conflict with the
styles used in the target document there may well be some anomalies. The
best bet is to try it and see and preferably use documents based on the same
template.

If you want it to adapt to the formatting of the target document (inserting
the literal text), which would seem more logical in the circumstances, use
instead a \*charformat switch. Note you can insert bookmarked parts of a
document too, so you can have all your insertions from the one document.

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<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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So is that what the \* Mergeformat switch does? If I use Word's 'insert'
function, it always adds that \* Mergeformat at the end of everything.
Nothing I read online makes good sense of when that should be used, and when
it is superfluous.

Thanks again for the help!
 
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