Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge

Also, please allow me one other question:

If the output of the data merge is to be a single text flow, how is the single flow ultimately used? Do you copy and paste sections from it into other documents? If so, what kind of documents?

Thanks!

My apologies for not being clear. Let me try again.

1) Am I correct in assuming that you want the merged document content repeated in a single output document? So if the document to be merged is 4 pages in length, you would like to have those same 4 pages appended to the same document for each spreadsheet row that gets processed? This includes pictures, movies, etc. that are part of the document?

2) What is the ultimate use of the single-combined document? What do you do with the combined content document?

3) Am I correct in thinking that your source document is a word-processing document (not a layout document) and you're only interested in repeating the main body flow for each spreadsheet record?

Thanks!

Sal

Ah, I understand! So the eventual use is to _print_ the documents.

No problem. The Pages Data Merge application might be fine just as it is. Try this:

1) Use the output to PDF option. Using this setting will create a folder with the individual files as PDF files

2) Instead of printing each PDF file, one-at-a-time, by opening each file, choosing Print, etc., simply either drag the files from the created output folder:

• Into the print job window for your Printer Queue application; or…

• open Home > Library > Printers folder and drag the PDF files onto the icon for the printer

Using the drag method should print all of the documents automatically for you without you having to open them!

Cheers,

Sal

You can automate the combining of multiple PDF files <http://macosxautomation.com/automator/combinePDFs/index.html> but I'm not sure how to accomplish the same thing in an automated fashion with Pages documents.

Cheers,

Sal

Interesting. Since text placeholders "disappear" once they've been replaced, it may be possible to process and entire page of labels using positional location of remaining placeholders. However, I think a better approach is to use the script tags to give each label group a unique identity.

For example, say a single page of labels contains 10 label groups (a label group being a set of identified text placeholders). The script tags for the first label group could be tagged like this: 1-First Name, 1-Last Name, 1-Address, etc. the second group could be 2-First Name, etc. A script could then do the following:

• extract act a row from the source data and parse it into match script tags: cell 1 = first name, etc.
• locate the text text placeholders on the current page that begin with the current loop number, like 1, 2, 3, etc.
• replace those tags with the row data
• repeat while iterating the loop number
• when a page has no more placeholders, generate a new page of the template document and reset the loop counter

Using this his technique a script could process sheets of labels!

interesting. Let me look into this. If I come up with a solution, I'll post the script on the website.

THanks!

Thank you for the great feedback, and it's great that you find the application useful.

I've already created an example label template that uses script tags and am working on a script for transferring spreadsheet data to the labels. Interesting. I'll post when I get all the issues resolved and working correctly.

As for creating a single PDF file, that's a single-click using the folder of output PDF files and this free system-service: <http://macosxautomation.com/automator/combinePDFs/index.html>

As for quality, I'm looking into what the settings are.

Thank you all for the useful feedback.