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

Feb 17, 2015 3:01 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

I am keep getting an error message:

Any thoughts as to what I am missing?

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Feb 17, 2015 8:28 PM in response to lyndsiesmith

You're data looks really strange. Are you getting this error when trying to read a data file?

What kind of file is it?

firi

Level 1

0 points

Feb 25, 2015 12:11 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

Hi Sal, I re downloaded the Pages Data Merge app and followed the steps to get the icon showing in the dock but still does not show. The rest is working fine, just the missing icon. Any suggestion on what to do?

Thanks for your help!

2504al

Level 1

0 points

Mar 19, 2015 5:15 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

Hi, The data merge application works great. I am merging in order to print marketing fliers, around 1000. Having them as individual files doesn't work as printing them is too time consuming. I tried using the following to combine them:

<http://macosxautomation.com/automator/combinePDFs/index.html>

both by downloading the work flow and by building it myself following the steps provided. Both ways I receive the same error :

The action “Rename Finder Items: Name Single Item” encountered an error.

Anything I could try to remedy this?

Thank you,

Allison

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Mar 19, 2015 8:04 PM in response to 2504al

Hmm. I wonder what kind of error is happening. Can you open the Console application, run the workflow again, and tell me what was showing up in the Console log.

Thanks!

2504al

Level 1

0 points

Mar 19, 2015 9:38 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

This is what my screen looks like when I try and run the workflow. I'm updated to Yosemite and pages and numbers are updates as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Mar 20, 2015 8:21 AM in response to 2504al

Yup, it looks like the Combine PDF action has become broken in Yosemite. Investigating...

Until it gets fixed, try using https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Mar 20, 2015 10:41 AM in response to 2504al

I checked again, and the Combine PDF action seems to work as expected. Can you click the results button on the Combine PDF action in your workflow to confirm that a file was created?

2504al

Level 1

0 points

Mar 20, 2015 8:34 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

I tried it again and it worked! But I am having another problem. I need envelopes when I do the data merge to a Pages file the formatting is correct:

Name

Address

City, State, ZIp

However, if I chose to merge to a PDF file the formatting changes to:

Name

AddressCItySateZIp

which will not work obviously for mailing envelopes. Any idea how to either change the formatting or is it possible to alter the Combine PDF workflow to be a combine pages workflow? I really appreciate you help and how quickly you responded to my initial questions. This is all completely new to me.

Thanks!

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Mar 22, 2015 3:40 PM in response to 2504al

I believe the issue is that your placeholders text selection in the Pages document included the commas and paragraph returns. Make sure that when you create a text placeholder you only select JUST THE TEXT TO REPLACE and not the line endings or punctuation.

Hope that solves the problem!

Apr 6, 2015 11:50 AM in response to Sal Soghoian

Sal,

I am trying to mail merge but ending up with "There was a problem getting the placeholder tags from the front Pages document." Running Pages 5.5.2, Numbers 3.5.2 and 10.10.2. No placeholder text in tables and only the one pages doc open.

The consol output is "

4/6/15 2:41:23.772 PM discoveryd[2147]: Basic Sockets SetDelegatePID() failed for PID[2810] errno[3] result[-1]

4/6/15 2:43:17.839 PM discoveryd[2147]: Basic Sockets SetDelegatePID() failed for PID[2810] errno[3] result[-1]

4/6/15 2:43:37.539 PM discoveryd[2147]: Basic Sockets SetDelegatePID() failed for PID[2810] errno[3] result[-1]

4/6/15 2:43:58.188 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: applicationWillFinishLaunching:

4/6/15 2:43:58.188 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: Checking ASOC framework…

4/6/15 2:43:58.188 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: (

(

"FIRST ITEM",

"SECOND ITEM",

"THIRD ITEM"

(

"FOURTH ITEM",

"FITH ITEM",

"SIXTH ITEM"

)

4/6/15 2:43:58.189 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: Reseting stored export location…

4/6/15 2:43:58.189 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: Reseting progress values to default…

4/6/15 2:43:58.226 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: *** -[AppDelegate applicationWillFinishLaunching:]: Pages got an error: every document of application id "com.apple.iWork.Pages" of «script» doesn’t understand the “count” message. (error -1708)

4/6/15 2:44:00.981 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: GETTING CURRENT DOCUMENT TAGS

4/6/15 2:44:00.984 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: Problem getting tags

4/6/15 2:44:03.809 PM Pages Data Merge[4078]: OK"

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Kevin

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Apr 6, 2015 12:52 PM in response to Kayak Coach

The error is stating that no document is open!

Do you have the template document open BEFORE launching the Merge application?

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Apr 6, 2015 1:53 PM in response to Kayak Coach

Also, do have a copy of Pages 09 running?

This error is indicating that there is a problem getting the count of open documents in Pages. That should never happen, and indicates that something is conflicting with the Apple Events communication with Pages.

Apr 6, 2015 1:52 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

I did have it open and the template up. Not sure if it makes sense, but I hadn't closed Pages and reopened it since downloading the app. Reopened Pages and it now sees it.

Sal Soghoian Author

Level 2

184 points

Apr 6, 2015 1:55 PM in response to Kayak Coach

Ah, right. The Merge app was not "seeing" or communicating with Pages. The restart would have fixed that. Glad it's working.

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Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge