Mail Merge Mystery!

If you send me the Numbers table, even with fake values and only five to ten rows, I'm quite sure that I will find the culprit in a few minutes but as I'm not a sooth sayer I can't guess.
Most often, the problem is linked to date cells.

Click my blue name to get my address.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 12 février 2011 14:40:45

Buzz40 wrote:
What am I doing wrong when I am mail merging and it only merges the first record, despite it recognising 150 more - but leaving the other documents blank at the merge points?

Have had this issue with Excel / Word and now trying it with Numbers / Pages. I am following the Merge Manager assiduously...Help!

My guess, going by your description, is that you are trying to merge information from more than one record (in Numbers, 'more than one row') into the same merge document.

Mail merge started out as a way to personalize a form letter by inserting personal data into each copy of the letter (the merge document). The merge produces (and prints) a copy of the letter for each record in the set to be merged.

It still works that way, although Pages will let you set two types of merge fields—a 'merge field', which uses data from each row in the set (or each card in the Address Book set) of recipients, and a 'sender field', which apples to all of the 'letters' and uses information from the Address Book card identified as "My Card."

You can choose to send each document to the printer as it is created, or to merge into a New Document.

If you make the New Document choice, Pages will open a new blank word processing template and place the merged documents into that, creating a new Section for each of the merged docs.
All of the merge fields in the first section will be populated from the first record/card/row of the selection, then populated fromthe second record in the second Section, etc.

Regards,
Barry

Barry wrote:

Buzz40 wrote:
What am I doing wrong when I am mail merging and it only merges the first record, despite it recognising 150 more - but leaving the other documents blank at the merge points?

Have had this issue with Excel / Word and now trying it with Numbers / Pages. I am following the Merge Manager assiduously...Help!

My guess, going by your description, is that you are trying to merge information from more than one record (in Numbers, 'more than one row') into the same merge document.

Hello Barry

I don't understand your proposal.

There is no way to ask to merge from more than one row in a single custom document.

Pages extract datas from row 2 to fill the first document
then it extract datas from row 3 to fill the 2d document
…
then it extract datas from row n to fill document (n-1)

I add that there is no link between the Numbers document and a sender field.
The User Guide state :
+• A sender field displays information about the document’s distributor. For example, a+
+letter can be formatted with a header that uses sender fields to display a company’s+
+name, address, and phone number.+
+*_Pages automatically fills sender fields with data from the Address Book card that’s designated My Card._*+
+• A merge field displays data from your Address Book or Numbers document. For+
+example, you can use merge fields to insert a person’s name at various locations in a letter.+

I remember that I already received a document with the described behavior.
But I just remember that it was linked to a feature of one of the fields. Forgot the details.
This is why I asked for the Numbers file.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 février 2011 10:44:46

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
Hello Barry

I don't understand your proposal.

There is no way to ask to merge from more than one row in a single custom document.

Hi Yvan,

I wasn't making a proposal, just describing (poorly it appears) what merge does and doesn't do.

Pages extract datas from row 2 to fill the first document
then it extract datas from row 3 to fill the 2d document
…
then it extract datas from row n to fill document (n-1)

Which is similar to what I said here: " The merge produces (and prints) a copy of the letter for each record in the set to be merged."

and here: " If you make the New Document choice...(a)ll of the merge fields in the first section will be populated from the first record/card/row of the selection, then populated from the second record in the second Section, etc."

I add that there is no link between the Numbers document and a sender field.
The User Guide state :
+• A sender field displays information about the document’s distributor. For example, a+
+letter can be formatted with a header that uses sender fields to display a company’s+
+name, address, and phone number.+
+*_Pages automatically fills sender fields with data from the Address Book card that’s designated My Card._*+
+• A merge field displays data from your Address Book or Numbers document. For+
+example, you can use merge fields to insert a person’s name at various locations in a letter.+

Covered this as well: " Pages will let you set two types of merge fields—a 'merge field', which uses data from each row in the set (or each card in the Address Book set) of recipients (for one copy of the merge letter) , and a 'sender field', which apples to all of the 'letters' and uses information from the Address Book card identified as "My Card."

I remember that I already received a document with the described behavior.
But I just remember that it was linked to a feature of one of the fields. Forgot the details.
This is why I asked for the Numbers file.

You may be right. I guess we'll find out when the OP sends you a copy of the file.

Regards,
Barry

Hi Barry

As you know my English is far from perfect and sometimes I understand wrongly.

A detail surfaced in my memory :
the merge process dislike date values and checkboxes (I don't remember for popup menus, sliders or steppers)

If column DA contain dates, we must extract the values from an auxiliary column whose formula is :
=""&DA

If columnCK contain checkboxes, we must extract values from an auxiliary column whose formula is something like

=IF(CK=TRUE,"⊠","⎕")
⊠ ($22A0), ⎕ ($2395), ☑ ($2611), ☒ ($2612)

Tests would teach us if such coercion is required for popup menus, steppers, or sliders.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 février 2011 16:37:09

Buzz40 wrote:
Yvan
Have put together test files for you to kindly play with.
How do I send files via this discussion reply? Or can I send direct? Really appreciate your help.
Caroline

Insert the files as attachments to a mail and send it to my mailbox.

In my first message I wrote :

Click my blue name to get my address 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 17 février 2011 22:15:29

Hi Caroline,

Same instructions as Yvan's: Click my name to the left of this message to get my address. Please put "Numbers mail merge" in the subject line.

Regards,
Barry

You already know that but I feel that it may be useful to other users.

I got the files and several things were wrong.

(1) the table containing the values to merge wasn't the first one in the first sheet.
To make it usable, I moved it in the thumbnails area so that it's now the first one.

(2) the name of fields were in a standard row when a basic requirement is to store them in an header row.

(3) Some columns were using an old fashioned font Wingdings (old 256 chars one) in which the wanted ✓ character is coded as a P.
I really don't understand why you did that because this checkmark is available in every Unicode font. It's the character $2713.

(4) Here is the worst feature : we aren't allowed to use characters like the double quotes (« ») which you used in fields names.
It's only when I dropped them that I got a normal behavior.

(5) As I don't understand immediately that the problem was these double quotes, I made some changes in the table.
There were duplicating columns names which is clearly a wrongdoer.
So, I renamed two columns as Ec1 and Eu1 so that they match the names of fields in the Pages document.
I assumed that the field named JC in the Pages document is pointing to the column entitled A (it wasn't used).

(6) In the Pages document there was an other wrongdoer : there were two fields named "forename". I renamed the second one as forename2.
For safe I created in the table a duplicate of the column forename which I named forename2.
I'm not sure that it was really required but I wanted to build a tool working flawlessly.
As far as I know, the Pages document may embed several fields, here forename and forename2 (what is required is that they have different names) extracting values from the same column.

(7) As the table no longer use this coelacanthus named Wingdings, I replaced it by Arial in every cell of the Pages document which was using it.

After that, the merge feature behave flawlessly.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 18 février 2011 15:50:05

The corrected documents were already in my late mail.
I re-sent this one today.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 20 février 2011 19:35:18

I sent them two time at the mail address which you used to send them to me.

De : koenig•••••••••••••
Objet : Réexp : Mail Merge Problem
Date : 20 février 2011 15:56:46 HNEC
À : moc.em@04zzub
Objet : Rép : Mail Merge Problem

De : ".mac" <koenig•••••••••••••
Date : 18 février 2011 13:48:46 HNEC
À : Caroline•••••••• <moc.em@04zzub>
Objet : Rép : Mail Merge Problem

Yes, here I used a mirror because I dislike mail addresses in the forum.

In both cases, there are encapsulated in a disk image :

Caroline••••••••.sparsebundle.zip

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 22 février 2011 23:17:02