Sal Soghoian

Q: 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

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Q: Pages 5.5 Mail and Data Merge

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  • by ryanfromjst,

    ryanfromjst ryanfromjst Dec 13, 2014 3:58 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 13, 2014 3:58 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Is there a way to suppress the printing of blank lines?  For instance, I have the following:

    SALUTATION FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME

    ADDRESS_ONE

    ADDRESS_TWO

    CITY, STATE  ZIP

     

    If ADDRESS_TWO is empty, I'd like that line to be skipped so that I see:

    SALUTATION FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME

    ADDRESS_ONE

    CITY, STATE  ZIP

     

    Thanks!

  • by lnq,

    lnq lnq Jan 2, 2015 2:44 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2015 2:44 PM in response to Sal Soghoian

    Hi Sal

    Boy I wish this was working for me...instead I get the following "Read Error"...I've tried a CSV, TSV, and a copy/paste from clipboard (In short everything but numbers) do these others work?

    Plese help! Thanks!

    Screen Shot 2015-01-02 at 2.39.14 PM.png

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 2, 2015 8:11 PM in response to lnq
    Level 2 (176 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?

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 2, 2015 8:18 PM in response to ryanfromjst
    Level 2 (176 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

  • by lnq,

    lnq lnq Jan 2, 2015 11:39 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 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:

    Screen Shot 2015-01-02 at 11.29.04 PM.png

    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.

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 3, 2015 4:21 AM in response to lnq
    Level 2 (176 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.

  • by bossa,

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

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 10, 2015 12:39 AM in response to bossa
    Level 2 (176 points)
    Jan 10, 2015 12:39 AM in response to bossa

    Looking into this...

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 10, 2015 12:53 AM in response to bossa
    Level 2 (176 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?

  • by bossa,

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

  • by bossa,

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

  • by ryanfromjst,

    ryanfromjst ryanfromjst Jan 10, 2015 8:37 AM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.

  • by ChrisEsch,

    ChrisEsch ChrisEsch Jan 12, 2015 8:47 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 1 (0 points)
    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!

  • by Sal Soghoian,

    Sal Soghoian Sal Soghoian Jan 12, 2015 9:18 PM in response to ChrisEsch
    Level 2 (176 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

  • by PeterBreis0807,

    PeterBreis0807 PeterBreis0807 Jan 12, 2015 10:29 PM in response to Sal Soghoian
    Level 8 (35,663 points)
    Mac OS X
    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

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