Level 2

184 points

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

174 replies

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 2, 2015 8:11 PM in response to lnq

Let's see what we can do.

The issue is with the Data Merge application reading the placeholder tags from the frontmost Pages document, not the data format.

First, a little detective work.

1) Of course you're using the latest Pages ;-)

2) None of the placeholders are within tables? (tables are not supported as of yet)

3) Is the document an older Pages 09 document that was updated or a newly created document?

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 2, 2015 8:18 PM in response to ryanfromjst

Hmmm. Challenging. It seems like an easy thing to do, but is actually more complex.

The problem is that the 2nd address placeholder is already in the template, so currently the merge application would replace the placeholder with an empty string "". What you want however, if for the application to delete the paragraph containing the placeholder. This might work in some cases where the placeholder begins a single line containing nothing but the placeholder, but would cause issues if the placeholder was within a paragraph elsewhere.

My suggestion is to condense the source data so that both address fields would be merged into one, making only one address placeholder necessary. That may be some work to cleanup, but would make the data source usable in the way you want.

Cheers! --SAL

lnq

Level 1

4 points

Jan 2, 2015 11:39 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

Ok...

1) Of course you're using the latest Pages ;-)

But of course, Master...

2) None of the placeholders are within tables? (tables are not supported as of yet)

Figured that out on attempt # 378

3) Is the document an older Pages 09 document that was updated or a newly created document?

I've tried both. Started with the newest, tried your solution, figured out what I was doing wrong (hadn't installed correctly. Oopsie). Kinda worked, but a few other problems surfaced (Hi ryanfromjst!) So then, I actually saved the new version as an 09, then went back and downloaded an old trial of Pages 09, and got *so very close*, but there's a glitch with the Target Field in the Inspector Tool like so:

You'll probably ask, so I'll tell you I'm running Yosemite (oy). I have gone down the ultimate Apple rabbit hole. I am going to lose my mind.

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 3, 2015 4:21 AM in response to lnq

OK. Next, open the Console application and run the Data Merge application again.

View the Console log, looking for something that indicates that it can't read the placeholders.

Post that line and a couple lines before and after.

Thanks.

bossa

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2015 12:21 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

Hi Sal, after Updating to Pages 5.5.2 and Numbers 3.5.2 the Pages Data Merge Application isn´t work correctly. In the moment i click the BEGIN buttom, Pages chrashes, the data merge is missing in a empty folder.

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 10, 2015 12:39 AM in response to bossa

Looking into this...

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 10, 2015 12:53 AM in response to bossa

Hmmm. I just ran the demo files example using Pages 5.5.2 on Yosemite with no issues.

Open the Console application, and in the search field at the top right of the Console window, enter "Pages Data" and that should display the log entries for the application. Anything in them that looks like an issue?

Remove the search term and look for the word "crash" in the log. Anything there?

Also, are you using version 1.1 of the Data Merge application?

bossa

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2015 1:23 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

Yes, i´m sure to use Data Merge 1.1. Within the console i find this:

10.01.15 KW 02 09:11:24,234 Pages[813]: CGSReenableUpdate: 4 QuickLook 0x000000010e5cb051 _Z18QLTryCatchAndCrashU13block_pointerFvvE + 17

10.01.15 KW 02 10:14:07,916 Numbers[1666]: CGSReenableUpdate: 4 QuickLook 0x000000010e09c051 _Z18QLTryCatchAndCrashU13block_pointerFvvE + 17

bossa

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2015 7:16 AM in response to bossa

I figured out the error by my own. It was my modified FINDER Name in CoreService. I have started some experiments with the FINDER. With the Finder Name "Finder" it works! Thank You a lot!

Jan 10, 2015 8:37 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

Hi Sal,

Thanks for your reply! Your suggestion of altering the source in Numbers worked just fine. I'm all set.

Thanks for your help and I appreciate all the work you do.

Jan 12, 2015 8:47 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

HI, Sal!

First, thanks so much for your Pages Data Merge App! It took me settling down and actually *reading* *ALL* the instructions before I got it working. (Folks, remember that the current version doesn't work in a table or chart...something I found out after trying to shoehorn my data into a template for mailing labels from a stationary company.)

Second, mark me down as "plus one" for updating the app to create mailing labels. Short of importing all my wife's contacts into my Contacts and printing labels from there, (that still works...right?) I'm a bit stranded. Adding 141 contacts just so I can print labels seems a might unweildy.

Again, thanks to you and your team for all their work and I look forward to future updates!

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Jan 12, 2015 9:18 PM in response to ChrisEsch

Thank you for the kind words. It's very gratifying to hear that the application solves a problem for you.

With regard to the labels, I've prototyped a script that seems to work well. The next step is to create tagged templates that are of the appropriate size and position. Any suggestions as to which label sets to attempt first?

Sal

Jan 12, 2015 10:29 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

Hi Sal

Is it possible to write an AppleScript to place images in named shapes?

Peter

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)

bossa

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:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44767841/MBK_GSG_Numbers_Source.pdf (data numbers as pdf)
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

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Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge