1 <page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
2 xmlns:e="http://projectmallard.org/experimental/"
7 <link type="guide" xref="index#merging"/>
8 <revision pkgversion="3.0" version="0.1" date="2010-05-04" status="incomplete"/>
10 What you may expect from a document merge.
12 <credit type="author">
13 <name>Jim Evins</name>
14 <email>evins@snaught.com</email>
16 <credit type="author">
17 <name>Mario Blättermann</name>
18 <email>mario.blaettermann@gmail.com</email>
21 <p>Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0</p>
25 <title>Performing a document merge</title>
27 <p>Document Merge (sometimes called "Mail Merge") is a powerful
28 feature that allows a unique label or card to be printed for each
29 record in an external data source.</p>
31 <p>The first step to performing a document merge is to prepare
32 a source document that contains your merge data. This data could
33 be mailing addresses or any other data that you wish to create
34 unique labels or cards for. Currently back-ends only exist for
35 text files and the evolution data server -- others are planned. The currently
36 supported text-file format is very simple: each line is a record;
37 fields are delimited by commas (CSV), tabs, or colons; and newlines
38 can be embedded into fields by using the "\n" entity. This file
39 could be created using any text editor or could be created by
40 another program or script. A common way of creating CSV files is
41 to export them from a spreadsheet program or from address book
44 <note style="advanced">
46 To export a CSV file from <app>kaddressbook</app>, first select the
47 contacts you wish to export. Click on the first contact, then press and
48 hold <key>Ctrl</key> and click on the other desired contacts to select them.
49 Then choose <guiseq><gui>File</gui><gui>Export</gui>
50 <gui>Export CSV File</gui></guiseq>.</p>
53 In the <gui>Select Contacts</gui>
54 window, enable the button <gui>Selected contacts</gui> (which should be
55 enabled by default anyway). Then click on <gui>OK</gui>.
56 In the <gui>Save As</gui> dialog, choose the desired folder and a name
57 for the file and click on <gui>Save</gui>.
61 <note style="advanced">
63 To export a CSV file from <app>Thunderbird</app>, click on the
64 <gui>Address Book</gui> toolbar button or choose <guiseq><gui>Tools
65 </gui><gui>Address Book</gui></guiseq> from the menu.
66 Then select the contacts you wish to export. Click on the first contact,
67 then press and hold <key>Ctrl</key> and click on the other desired contacts
68 to select them. Then choose <guiseq><gui>Tools</gui><gui>Export</gui>
72 In the file chooser window, choose the desired folder and a name
73 for the file and change the value of the drop-down button in the
74 right bottom corner to <gui>Comma Separated</gui>. Finally, click on
79 <p>A label must then be configured to "point at" this data file.
80 To configure the merge properties of a document, choose
81 <guiseq><gui>Objects</gui>
82 <gui>Merge Properties</gui></guiseq> menu item
83 to display the <gui>merge properties</gui> dialog. This
84 dialog is used to select the exact data file format and file
85 name (location) of the merge data.</p>
87 <p>Finally, once the label has been configured for a data file,
88 field keys can be inserted into text objects and used as source
89 or data for barcode objects and image filenames for image objects.
90 See <link xref="editprop" /> for more information
91 on using merge data for these object types.</p>
93 <p>Now that your label is configured, <app>gLabels</app> will print a unique
94 label for each record in your source document -- substituting fields
95 from each record for field keys in the all text, barcode, and
98 <p>See <link xref="merge" /> for a detailed
99 tutorial on the document merge feature.</p>