Sal Soghoian

Q: Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge

Pages 5.5 includes new scripting support for locating and replacing text placeholders. In addition, text placeholders can be "tagged" in the application interface, with script identifiers by selecting the text placeholder to tag and entering its "script tag" in the the new Script Tag field available at the bottom of the More tab in the format sidebar. With this new ability, scripts can replace the text placeholders in a document with data from other sources, including Numbers spreadsheets.

 

But you don't have to write scripts to take advantage of this new feature!

 

To make it easy for non-scripters to perform Mail merges, and other automated data merging tasks, there is a free application, the Pages Data Merge application, available at: http://iworkautomation.com/pages/script-tags-data-merge.html

 

Watch the movie, follow the instructions, and give it a try!

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 2:43 PM

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Q: Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge

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  • by Lucyblade,

    Lucyblade Lucyblade Jan 15, 2015 9:38 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2015 9:38 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Hi Sal,

     

    I'd also like to say a big thank you for your work on this.

     

    Just to add some further information as I too was getting the read error message.

     

    I followed all the solutions here as I had also started with an old pages 09 document brought into 5.5.2 which generated the error. However when I ditched the updated pages document and started with a brand new pages document the problem persisted...... after a few choice words and a lot of failed attempts which were not making any sense I reverted to the trusty, restart the whole machine procedure, after a fresh start and a new pages document, lo and behold it all worked.

     

    Thank you again :O)

  • by bossa,

    bossa bossa Jan 17, 2015 11:02 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2015 11:02 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Dear Sal,

     

    thanks for the “pages data merge app”. The program does the job and brings back the terrible missed mailmerge function from iWork.  But I also used the mailmerge function to put data into the form of a List Report. That is the before chosen information from a row could continually be listed making a special layout as done in Filemaker. This was realized by the possibility in iWorks 09 to copy the results of the data-merge on a single page and then erase the pagebreaks.

    In the sample document in the dropbox link is an example to explain what I mean:

     

    1. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44767841/MBK_GSG_Numbers_Source.pdf (data numbers as pdf)
    2. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44767841/MBK_GSG_List_Report_Destination.pdf (list report as pdf)

     

    Do you see a possible way to transfer the outcome of the pages data merge app onto a single pages document? Do you think that the page merge data app could be altered in regards to this? (That is, again, merged to a single pages document and not to a merged PDF.)

     

    thanks with best regards

     

     

    bossa

  • by ingreenink,

    ingreenink ingreenink Jan 23, 2015 7:55 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 7:55 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    I really like this solution, but am having trouble getting this to work. After I define my text as placeholder text, I can't seem to get the option for Script ID to show up where you are accessing it. I'm using version 5.5.2 of Pages. Any advice?

     

    Thanks!

  • by Lucyblade,

    Lucyblade Lucyblade Jan 23, 2015 9:40 AM in response to ingreenink
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 9:40 AM in response to ingreenink

    Hi there, I too had trouble finding this at first but hopefully this info will help

     

    1. Make sure you have selected your placeholder text, it should be highlighted in a pinkish colour
    2. On the left hand side format panel, make sure that the middle Text option is selected, this should be highlighted in blue
    3. In this panel select the "More" option from "Style | Layout | More"
    4. Now at the very bottom you should see Script Tag with an editable box below it, this is what you are looking for

     

    Good Luck

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 23, 2015 10:20 AM in response to ingreenink
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 10:20 AM in response to ingreenink

    Quick question: is the text you want to use as a placeholder within a table? Currently, text within tables are not supported as scriptable text placeholders. Sorry. -- Sal

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 23, 2015 10:27 AM in response to bossa
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 10:27 AM in response to bossa

    Looks like it would best be accomplished by creating an AppleScript script to create and populate the master output document. Are you up for the challenge?

  • by bossa,

    bossa bossa Jan 23, 2015 11:42 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 11:42 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    1. I know that tables are not supported!

    2. Yes!

    Thank you -- Bossa

  • by ingreenink,

    ingreenink ingreenink Jan 23, 2015 12:08 PM in response to Lucyblade
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 12:08 PM in response to Lucyblade

    I updated my operating system to Yosemite and was able to get everything to work. Thank you for the help!

  • by jeffallen1,

    jeffallen1 jeffallen1 Jan 28, 2015 5:28 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 5:28 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Hey Sal, first of all, bless you for all this stuff you're doing. It's great!

     

    So I downloaded Pages Data Merge -- I'm trying to merge music download codes to post cards.  They're all on the same page.  My numbers file has one collum - and that's the codes.

     

    My pages document has text boxes -- 8 (1 per post card)

     

    When I define my placeholder each text box puts out the same code...then it outputs the next page, different code, but it's the same code on every card again. i'm not sure that makes sense...  Attached is a screenshot so you can see what I'm doing... I need every card to have a different code.

     

    Maybe you can tell me what I'm doing wrong... Thanks!  Screen Shot 2015-01-28 at 7.27.32 PM.png

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 29, 2015 10:26 AM in response to jeffallen1
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Jan 29, 2015 10:26 AM in response to jeffallen1

    First of all, you're not doing anything incorrectly. The issue is that the Data Merge application is not designed to perform the kind of task you're attempting.

     

    You've tagged each box with the same tag "code". The Data Merge app will replace ALL instances of the tag with the value of the cell you've assigned it. So it's actually performing correctly too!

     

    The Data Merge application treats the entire document as a single pass, and opens a new copy of the original document for each of the following passes. So, this equates to one row of data from the source table for each document pass.

     

    What you want is for each tagged section of the document to be from an individual row of data of the source table.

     

    I'm working on a script for doing just that, but since things are pretty busy here at the moment, it's taking me longer than I anticipated to post the script.

     

    Sorry about the inconvenience, I'll get back to it as soon as I can, and post the script on the same page on iworkautomation.com.

     

    -- SAL

  • by davidintyler,

    davidintyler davidintyler Jan 30, 2015 7:21 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2015 7:21 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Thanks so much for this "work around" while the new Pages matures.

     

    I have a lot of fields to merge and it works great, but It would be great if the program could automatically match the tag name to a column name if they were identical. Or, if the links defined in your program between the two documents could be stored to populate the selection grid.

     

    Thanks for your work.

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 30, 2015 7:31 AM in response to davidintyler
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Jan 30, 2015 7:31 AM in response to davidintyler

    Excellent suggestions! Thank you.

  • by JeanVis,

    JeanVis JeanVis Feb 4, 2015 7:17 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 4, 2015 7:17 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Hi Sal,

     

    Somehow I can't get it working, not even with the sample files you provided. The error I get says: "Numbers got an error: document 1 doesn't understand the "exists" message.

     

    Any idea what the problem could be?

     

    Pages_Data_Merge_and_Pages_5_5_Mail_and_Data_Merge___Apple_Support_Communities.jpg

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Feb 4, 2015 8:01 AM in response to JeanVis
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Feb 4, 2015 8:01 AM in response to JeanVis

    I'm surprised. What is happening is that the Data Merge application is asking Numbers to see if there is an open document (“does the first document exist?)), but the query is getting rejected by saying that "Numbers doesn't understand what “exists” means!"

     

    This usually means that the message sent by the Data Merge application is getting jumbled in the OS someplace. Let's do some checking...

     

    1) Are you using the latest copy of Numbers and Pages?

    2) Do you have Numbers 09 on the computer? Is it open? If so, don't run it when the Data Merge application is open.

    3) Which version of the OS are you running?

    4) Do you have the document you want to merge open in Pages _before_ launching the Data Merge application?

    5) Do you have a Numbers document, containing the data source table, open _before_ launching the Data Merge application?

  • by JeanVis,

    JeanVis JeanVis Feb 4, 2015 10:19 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 4, 2015 10:19 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Wow, that is a quick reply! And a very helpful one, the problem was that I had the Data Merge application open when working on the Pages and Numbers documents. I did try to close and open the Data Merge app but that did not help. You really have to open the Pages and Numbers documents BEFORE you open the Data Merge application.

     

    Thanks Sal!!!

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