Level 1

8 points

Mail Merge Mystery!

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!

MacBookPro 5,2, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 12, 2011 5:25 AM

25 replies

Buzz40 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 23, 2011 3:21 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Afraid you are way ahead of me technically - I still have no idea where these disc images are, what they look like, how to get at them or how to open them! Cannot see any mail in my inbox with zip files attached. You are being very cryptic indeed ...perhaps you could just send them to me as attached files and post something general to confirm in this discussion.
Caroline

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 23, 2011 3:49 AM in response to Buzz40

I repeat that I sent the documents twice.

first time :

second time :

You may ask many times, I will never send iWork documents as plain attachments.

I always use and will continue to use zipped folders or disk image.

I sent it for the 3rd time.

Maybe you will open your eyes this time !

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 février 2011 12:48:12

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 23, 2011 3:51 AM in response to Buzz40

Your behavior is so boring that I posted twice

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 février 2011 12:48:12

Message was edited by: KOENIG Yvan

Buzz40 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 25, 2011 5:01 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Yvan

I am in the Apple Store in London and it is being confirmed that I have not received the attachments. I can see that you have sent them but they have not appeared my end. Can you think of any other way to send them?

Am sending you a screen shot to show that none of the attachments has come through.

Caroline

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 25, 2011 8:43 AM in response to Buzz40

The archive is available on my iDisk :

<http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

download : Buzz40.sparsebundle.zip

Maybe Jerrold may grab the archive too.

He would be able to double check what I made.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 25 février 2011 17:43:41

Buzz40 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 25, 2011 11:13 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Thanks - that finally came through! Yipeeee

However ...there were no comments picked up... Was there a reason why not do you think?

I tried then to copy my data input table data into the file you worked on and tried to do a merge using your master but it did not look like yours did! A lot of odd symbols and info in the wrong cells. Can't understand why.

I checked the numbers file and it seemed ok. I could send this to your idisk filled in but please treat confidentially, although you don't know the pupils ...just think it better you see exactly what I am working with. What is the best way to send it. I have zipped it!

Re Comments:

they are not coming through correctly male / female. I know from excel days that I needed to sort the codes in ascending order, which they are. Apart from that I cannot see why the male ones are often picking up female comments.

Please note that I have over-ridden a few comments that needed a more personal one - for these I have removed the code in column 'C&G' on Report table, so it does not pull in the standard comment. I have also written them in a Comments stickie in the code cell on the Data Input table to be sure I don't lose them.

Thanks for the continued help ..no-one in the Apple store in London could work it out so I am really grateful.
Caroline

Feb 25, 2011 11:50 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

I downloaded. I ran the merge. Everything looks normal. I have the files and can look at specifics if needed.

Jerry

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 25, 2011 1:42 PM in response to Jerrold Green1

I don't understand why it works for you and me but don't on the OP's machine.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 25 février 2011 22:42:10

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 25, 2011 2:03 PM in response to Buzz40

(1) comments were in the mails.

tomorrow I will move them to a text file and will put them in my idisk.

(2) the problem with male and female is linked to the fact that I had to remove one row from your original table.

I removed row 1
I changed the new row 1 (was row 2) in a header row to match the merge tool requirements.

I didn't adjust the formula extracting the comments from an other table.
There is one parameter (the one defining the row offset) to change to get the correct results.

(3) I don't understand how my mail behaved.

Did you received something or nothing?
Did screenshots were available ?
Maybe your application drop attachments whose size exceed a given limit.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 25 février 2011 23:03:49

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Feb 26, 2011 5:12 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

As there is nothing confidential in my comments, I put all of them here :

And to tell the truth, I was forced to edit the table to make 'surname' available.

A source column can't be an header one (surname was such a column).

I am unable to guess the links between fields using double quotes and the available fields.

Looking other tables, I found columns which may resemble to the field names in the table Y7 Reports 2011 :: Data Input

(1) this table can't be the source because it's not the first one in the sheet.
To make it usable, as you will see, I moved it in the thumbnails area so that it's now the first one.

(2) the name of fields weren't in an header row which is a basic requirement.

(3) using two fonts in the table is bad practice
Only the Pages document is allowed to use different fonts.
At least, what is bad practice is to use an old fashioned font like Wingdings which isn't an Unicode one.
I really don't understand why you did that because the checkmark which you used 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 naming.
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) samedi 26 février 2011 14:12:09

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Mail Merge Mystery!