RTF Mail Merge Fields
Vic
I am trying to setup a mail merge and use rtf text fields from a database.
These rtf fields contain the formatting instructions for bolding, bullets,
font settings etc. However, the problem I am having is word does not
recognize these formatting characters and prints everything as plain text.
My main document is an rtf file.
How can I get word to interpretate these instructions? I am using Word 2002.
Thank you,
Vic
macropod
Word's mailmerge facility outputs the source data as displayed, but without any character formatting that may be present in the data
source.
You can, however, apply formatting switches (picture switches in Word parlance) to mergefields to control the output's appearance.
--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
"Vic" <v...@showsec.com> wrote in message news:4D1BC821-E02F-47B0...@microsoft.com...
Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com
formatting switches, I think that you would have to use a "roll-your-own"
equivalent to mailmerge where in place of a mail merge main document
containing mergefields, you would use a template containing docvariable
fields and then you would run a macro that would create a new document from
that template for each record in data source, setting the values of
variables in the document to the value of corresponding field for that
record in the data source and making use of the formatting information in
the data source to apply the required formatting.
For information on Word field formatting switches, see "Formatting Word
fields with switches" on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's website at:
http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm
--
Hope this helps.
Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.
Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
"Vic" <v...@showsec.com> wrote in message
news:4D1BC821-E02F-47B0...@microsoft.com...
Vic
Thanks for the reply but I'm having a problem understanding how to implement
these switches. The rtf fields are inserted in an Access database using a
VB program and contain data such as:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 MS Sans
Serif;}{\f1\fnil\fcharset2 Symbol;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs17 OK - We need to change these text boxes
so that we can \b set strings of words to BOLD\b0 , change fonts, do
underlines and we also need to do bullets:
\par
\par
\pard{\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}{\*\pn\pnlvlblt\pnf1\pnindent0{\pntxtb\'B7}}Oranges
\par {\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}Apples
\par {\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}Pears
\par \pard
\par This all seems to work but when it gets merged into word, all of the
formatting characters show as text!
\par
\par
\par }
It appears to me from the use of these switches I can use /*charformat to
bold, underline and italics. So where are these switches implemented? I
tried as a test to press ctl F9 and inserted Graham's bold example { REF
chapter2_title \* Charformat } would display "Whales of the Pacific" but it
only displayed this as plain text without formatting.
I need to be able to have this done programmatically so I would assume I'd
need some sort of word macro. The VB program invokes the mail merge and
turns the document into a PDF which then gets merged with other PDF
documents to produce a final document as a PDF. So I suppose I'd have to
invoke the word macro to massage the word document after the mail merge is
completed. Would that be correct?
I don't see that bullets, indenting and font changes are supported with
switches. Are there any examples of using templates with docvariable
fields. There are about 20 merge fields that are inserted in this document.
Would you provide a bit of guidance on where to go from here? Are there
some examples somewhere for doing this. It would seem to me to be a quite
common occurance but I'm finding limited information on using switches and
merge fields that contain rtf data.
Vic
"Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com" <d...@REMOVECAPSmvps.org>
wrote in message news:uZxJBGSq...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
merge fields only insert character data, with no formatting information
from the data source. If you copied your Access data to a Word document,
used that as the data source, and used REF fields instead of MERGEFIELD
fields to insert data, some of the formatting gets through, but it's all
rather arbitrary.
The only way I know to get the RTF text from Access to Word that has any
hope of working is to export the contents of each Access RTF field to a
.rtf file on disk, then insert t using an INCLUDETEXT field. This is of
course non-trivial, but I quote an earlier message that has some ideas...
----------------------
Using Mailmerge without code, you have to export the content of each
field containing rtf text to a disk file, then use INCLUDETEXT to insert it.
Typically you would need to export the text to a filename that is
somehow related to a unique identifier (e.g. the primary key field(s))
in the table you are merging. So suppose you have a autonumber primary
key called k containing 1,2,3,... and your column is called mycolumn,
you might create a file called c:\myrtfs\mycolumn1.rtf for the rtf for
mycolumn in record 1
Then you would use a nested INCLUDETEXT field in your mail merge main
document, e.g.
{ INCLUDETEXT "c:\\myrtfs\\mycolumn{ MERGEFIELD k }" }
Alternatively, you might be able to use Word MailMerge events: for each
Access record, the event handler (probably MailMergeBeforeRecordMerge)
would need to use e.g. ADO to export the RTF, then insert it into the
document. I do not know how feasible that is.
I can't say I recommend this, but for a small number of records you
could consider the following:
a. create an Access User-defined (VBA) function that exports the RTF
for a specified field into a file
b. create an Access query that returns the other data you want and
calls that function. Ideally the function would return the pathname of
the file it created, with backslashes doubled up.
c. In Word, connect to that query using the DDE connection method
(there is another possibility)
Here's a how-to I wrote in 2001, slightly modified:
Suppose the function
is called rtfx
b. create a query that has columns k, r and rtfx
c. use the query as the datasource for your merge.
For example, the following Access function should do the necessary
Function rtfx(n As Integer, s As String) As String
dim r as String
Dim t As String * 1
' Generate the file name you want
rtfx = "c:\myrtfs\rtf" & Trim(Str(n)) & ".rtf"
' and return a doubled-backslash version ias the function result
rtfx = "c:\\myrtfs\\rtf" & Trim(Str(n)) & ".rtf"
Open r For Binary As 1 Len = 1
For i = 1 To Len(s)
t = Mid(s, i, 1)
Put #1, i, t
Next
Close 1
End Function
Then your query might have columns
k, r, and rtfx(k,r)
e.g.
Run the query in Access and Access will modify the text in column 3 to
something like
Expr1: rtfx([k],[r])
You can then change Expr1 to a more helpful name such as "filepath"
Then create your Word mailmerge main document and set up the query as the
data source - Word should offer k,r and filepath as the possible
mergefields.
Your INCLUDETEXT field would then need to look like
{ INCLUDETEXT "{ MERGEFIELD filepath }" }
Worth a try?
----------------------
Of course, that assumes that you are using the MailMerge mechanism, but
faced with this problem for real, I would probably avoid MailMerge and
use Access VBA code to generate each Word document in turn (assuming
you're not going for a catalog/directory), saving each RTF field to disk
as needed and inserting it directly using the relevant Word Insert
file method. However, I cannot provide you with code for that.
Yes, it probably is something that lots of people want to do, but there
are non-trivial problems to solve when attempting this, no matter how
you encode your formatted text (e.g., you encode it using XML, but using
which vocabulary/ies?). And I don't suppose anyone on the development
side has wanted to solve it for RTF-encoded text ever since RTF became a
"legacy format", which you could argue is over a decade ago.
Peter Jamieson
Vic
Thanks for the reply! I found an old post where you had indicated using
tables and the originator had indicated success. I have modified my program
to create the merge data source as a word table and I'm having some
successes. I load the form(s) containing the rtf data and then create a
word document with a table for the merge data which I then copy and paste
into the word table columns from the form values. It works! I had to
change MERGEFIELD to Ref to make it work.
The only problem I'm having now setting the bullet style. When it gets
merged the bullets come in as 1 - 2 - 3 ...
Thanks Peter, Your help is appreciated.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eT15cLZq...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
Vic
follows the bulleted list i.e.
(The following data is from the merge source)
Text Box Facility Info: OK - We need to change these text boxes so that we
can set strings of words to
BOLD, change fonts, do underlines and we also need to do bullets:
This all seems to work but when it gets merged into word, all of the
formatting is lost. No bolding, underlines,
bullets etc.
1. Apples
2. Oranges
3. Bananas
This seems to be changing the paragraph number in the rest ot the document
(the main document starts here)
INTRODUCTION
3.1. PURPOSE
The 3.1 PURPOSE should be 1.1. After the merge it became 3.1. Perhaps if I
could get the bullet character to change to something else may have some
sort of impact on the numbering but so far I haven't found a way to specify
the bullet character.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eT15cLZq...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
main document - although it may be possible to prevent "interference"
between the numbering in the RTF and the numbering in the main document
by specifying a named list template or some such in the main document,
that stuff is hard to tame. What you coud try is SEQ-based numbering in
the main document, e.g. where you use
{ SEQ } fields, the \r switch to reset numbering for each sequence, \h
to hide the result when you do that, and the \c switch to re-use the
existing number, e.g.
{ SEQ level2 \r0 \h }{ SEQ level1 }.
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
{ SEQ level2 \r0 \h }{ SEQ level1 }.
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
{ SEQ level1 \c }.{ SEQ level2 }
to give you a sequence like
1.
1.1
1.2
1.3
2.
2.1
2.2
2.3
I don't know if that approach fits your requirement, but it's the best I
can do right now.
Vic
What I've found is that I can enter the bullet character using ALT 7 (.)
for each item instead of setting selBullet = true per the rtf spec and it
works correctly in the merge. Also the paragraph sequencing is not
affected. Any ideas ?
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eBoQBdnq...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
For one thing, you are probably now way ahead of me!
Also - I've rather lost the plot here, but if you can spell out what you
are using in the RTF, what you are using in the mail merge main
document, what results you are trying to achieve and what you are
actually getting, I can certainly have another look.
Vic
OK - Here's what I'm doing. I am using VB6 program to do a mail merge
where the both the merge source and the main document are rtf files. For
the merge source the app creates the word document with a word table which
contains the merge data from an Access database. The problem I'm having is
when the merge source contains a bulleted list, the merged documents are
formatted as 1. 2. 3. etc. instead of a bullet (.). I have checked the
merge source and the column containing the bullet list is correctly
formatted. I also tried doing the merge in word and the results are the
same as when the merge is done in my program. So my question is how do I a
merge where the source contains bulleted lists and maintain the correct
style of the bullets.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eZxBYLwq...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
OK, I think it's going to be difficult to start from where you are and
achieve a reliable result.
It seems to me that there are two main considerations:
a. do you have full control over the formatting that is in the data
source?
b. even if you do, is there a way to ensure that Word honours the
formatting that you applied?
Most of the following is guesswork as I have not even attempted to
follow all the steps you are likely to be using...
As far as (a) is concerned, if you are using the Richtext control in VB6
to generate the RTF in the data source, then
c. From your previous messages it seems that the control is generating
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 MS Sans
Serif;}{\f1\fnil\fcharset2 Symbol;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs17 OK - We need to change these
text boxes so that we can \b set strings of words to BOLD\b0 ,
change fonts, do underlines and we also need to do bullets:
\par
\par
\pard{\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}{\*\pn\pnlvlblt\pnf1\pnindent0{\pntxtb\'B7}}Oranges
\par {\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}Apples
\par {\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}Pears
\par \pard
\par This all seems to work but when it gets merged into word,
all of the formatting characters show as text!
\par
\par
\par }
d. my guess is that Word 2002 will ignore the formatting specified as
{\pntext\f1\'B7\tab}
(which is "direct formatting"), because Word 2002 is supposed to
know how to honour
{\*\pn\pnlvlblt\pnf1\pnindent0{\pntxtb\'B7}}
which specifies bullet formatting for the list as a whole.
e. in other words, it is possible that if you could avoid generating
that {\*\...} stuff, Word would just take the bullets you provided and
insert them
However, if you are going via an intermediate Word file as my previous
posts suggested, it is possible that even if you were able to remove
that {\*\ } RTF code, Word might well re-introduce it if you
programmatically use Word Save->As to save your data source.
Finally, if you have control over what is in the database, the chances
are that you would be much better off avoiding this approach to a merge
- perhaps generating th necessary bullets by direct programming of the
word object model rather than going via mailmerge. If you do not, then
the only way is if something can be done about (b)
As for (b), it is probably a question of whether the paragraph(s)
containing the { REF memofield } field could be formatted using a
particular "listformat" that overrides anything in the RTF. I simply do
not know whether that can be done or not.
Vic
I think there is just an inherent problem in Word (and I've also tried Word
7) with merging a data source that contains a table with a bulleted list.
If you can just create 2 documents and the source contains a column that
includes a bulleted list and merge that into a second word document. I
have not been able to get this to work simply using the buttons on the menu
for a mail merge.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eHdx6j$qJHA...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
>>>>>>>> The problem with trying to include RTF text via merge fields is
>>>>>>>> that merge fields only insert character data, with no formatting
>>>>>>>> information from the data source. If you copied your Access data
>>>>>>>> to a Word document, used that as the data source, and used REF
>>>>>>>> fields instead of MERGEFIELD fields to insert data, some of the
>>>>>>>> formatting gets through, but it's all rather arbitrary.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The only way I know to get the RTF text from Access to Word that
>>>>>>>> has any hope of working is to export the contents of each Access
>>>>>>>> RTF field to a .rtf file on disk, then insert t using an
>>>>>>>> INCLUDETEXT field. This is of course non-trivial, but I quote an
>>>>>>>> earlier message that has some ideas...
In other words, using MERGEFIELD fields loses the most formatting, using
REF fields with a Word format data source loses less formatting, using
INCLUDETEXTed RTF files generated on the fly /may/ lose less than that
(but I wouldn't count on it, because at that point you face all the
difficulties of merging two files, each of which may reference its own
set of "format definitions" (cf. styles), which may clash in various
ways). (and in that case, it may not matter /how/ you insert the RTF,
but I guess you have a better chance of controlling the outcome using
VB(A)+Word object model than MERGEFIELD/REF fields).
Vic
Well, I have it pretty much working using Word Tables and I'm using Ref
fields. I'm able to specify bold, underline, italics and I'm able to change
fonts and font sizes. These will all merge fine from the data source. The
only problem is that bullet lists causes a problem because it changes the
bullet character to 1 - 2 - 3 etc. and causes problems in the paragraph
sequencing. What I'm doing now to get around this is when a bulleted list
is setup on the merge source I am inserting ALT 7 (.) instead setting
selBullet to true per the rtf spec. While on the VB screen it shows as a
heavy veritcal mark, it comes through as a . on the merged document.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:%23OLZOmA...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Peter Jamieson
Can you spell out at what point you are making the Alt-7 change and
where you are doing it? The thing is that setting selBullet to true is
something you would set in the Richtext editor control's properties -
selBullet isn't (AFAIK) something in the RTF spec. What I'm interested
in is
a. whether in fact by using Alt-7 you are inserting a bullet character
(whereas a bulleted list does not actually have a bullet character in
the RTF for the paragraph)
b. what the resulting RTF is in each case.
c. what your options are with regard to generating/re-using the RTF?
e.g.,
- if you are generating it in the first place, can it usefully be
generated in a different way?
- would trying to detect bulleted paragraph paragraphs in the rtf
and "fixing" them by inserting a bullet character instead, at some point
between the data source and the merge operation, be an option?
Vic
OK - I understand and I figured out why the bullet character was incorrect.
It seems the problem is that I need to set a font before inserting the
bullet character.
I started out thinking I could have a routine that would massage the rtf and
fix whatever was causing the problem. I could never get this to work so my
solution now is to use Dev Ashish's MySendkeys code and insert a bullet
character when setting up a bullet list. The user interface looks the same
so when bullets are turned on it simply inserts a bullet character each time
the enter key is pressed. Pressing the bullet list button turns it off.
I believe this is a problem with all versions of Word because I have not
been able to setup a mail merge in Word and use another Word Document
containing a table that contains bulleted lists. So my work-around is now
working just fine which contains all of the functionality that I need for
this application.
Vic
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillMAPSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
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