.FO=/PAGE #/ MAIL MERGE Mail Merge is a Scribble! option that allows you to type a personalized document once and then print out the same letter for many people. All you have to do is type the document one time and merge as many names and addresses to it as you like, from a separate mail list file easily created with Scribble!. Sending out 1000's of seasonal holiday cards to your friends, clients, or family will no longer be a month long project. You simply merge the mailing list file you created with Scribble! to the holiday greeting you composed, and Scribble! will automatically take the names and addresses from the file and merge them into as many greeting cards as you instructed it to print. Chapter 1 If you created a file of the following names and addresses (several Amiga User Groups across the United States of America and Canada) with Scribble!, a personalized letter can be produced for each name and address on the mailing list. Mr. Joe Lowery AMUSE 151 1st Avenue New York, N.Y. 10003 Mr. Tim Avery 1st Amiga User Group 543 Old County Road San Carlos, Ca. 94070 Mr. Bill Hogsett CA-Aug 3715 Townley Road Shaker Heights, Oh. 44122 Mr. Tim Grantham TPUG Magazine 5300 Yonge Street Willowdale, Ontario, M2N 5R2 Mr. Michael Dalton SCAUG P.O. Box 2098 Merritt Island, Fl. 32952 Ms. Roxann Pappas AUG P.O. Box 1377 Rapid City, S.D. 57709 Mail Merge will take the above names and addresses, merge them into a document, thus allowing you to send out several letters easily, without the hassle of typing the names individually on every letter. Chapter 2 (How?) You may have noticed by now that there is no pull down menu for Mail Merge. This is because you operate Mail Merge with Dot Commands. Dot Commands are usually two alphabetic letters with a period symbol or Dot (.) placed before them. If you press the F2 key on the top of your Amiga keyboard, you will see a list of several Dot Commands Scribble! uses for all purposes, including Mail Merge. This chapter is designed to help familiarize you with the Dot Commands that Mail Merge utilizes. Several examples and exercises are provided. The following Dot Command guide will help you learn the meanings of the Dot Commands Mail Merge uses. Please notice the period symbols or the Dot (.) before two alphabetic letters. .DF : Open DATA FILE This will specify the name you give the data file. .RV : READ VARIABLE This will specify the names of the variables and value orders .AV : ASK for VARIABLE .SV : SET the VARIABLE IMPORTANT These commands must be entered on a line, all by itself, before the actual text. For example, one format you may find convenient is: .DF=ADDRESS.DAT .RV=COMPANY, ADDRESS1, ADDRESS2, ADDRESS3, NAME AUGUST 20, 1986 &COMPANY& &ADDRESS1& &ADDRESS2& &ADDRESS3& Dear &NAME&, Scribble! is now inclusive of Spell Check and Mail Merge options. We believe many of &COMPANY& members will like the enhanced capabilities Scribble! now contains. Please feel free to send us your written comments and suggestions. Sincerely, Steve Pagliarulo Research & Development If you wanted to send a letter to several Amiga User Groups you would type a letter similar to the above and then create a data file of names and addresses like the following: AMUSE, 151 1st Street, "NEW YORK, N.Y.", 10003, Mr. Joe Lowery Mail Merge will place AMUSE where you inserted &COMPANY& on the form letter. The ampersand (&) is needed to surround the variable you want inserted into your letter. DO NOT use ampersands in Dot Commands, or you will not receive correct operation. Mail Merge will look for the following when inserting the variables to your letter: AMUSE will be inserted into the letter, rather than &COMPANY&. 151 1st Street will be inserted where you place &ADDRESS1&. New York, N.Y will be inserted where you place &ADDRESS2&. 10003 will be inserted where you place &ADDRESS3&. Mr. Joe Lowery will be inserted where you place &NAME& AMUSE will be inserted one more time where you inserted &COMPANY&. (In the middle of the first sentence.) You can place the next name and address directly underneath the first one to get something that looks like this: AMUSE, 151 1st Street, "New York, N.Y.", 10003, Mr. Joe Lowery 1st Amiga User Group, 543 Old County Road, "San Carlos, Ca.", 94070, Mr. Tim Avery You do not need to place a space between the different addresses to separate them. All you need is a carriage return after the last variable for one set of data. Mail Merge will insert each address into your letter properly without the spaces. However, putting a space between the different addresses (in our case, between AMUSE and 1st Amiga User Group) will not cause incorrect operation. IMPORTANT You MUST place quotes around any text that has a comma (,) in it, or Mail Merge will read it as the next variable. Notice the format of NEW YORK, N.Y. in the AMUSE address. It has quotes around it because city and state is separated by a comma. When you are finished creating a data file of addresses it may look similar to this: AMUSE, 151 1st Street, "New York, N.Y.", 10003, Mr. Joe Lowery 1st Amiga User Group, 543 Old County Road, "San Carlos, Ca.", 94070, Mr. Tim Avery CA-Aug, 3715 Townley Road, "Shaker Heights, Oh.", 44122, Mr. Bill Hogsett TPUG Magazine, 5300 Yonge Street, "Willowdale, Ontario,", M2N 5R2, Mr. Tim Grantham SCAUG, P.O. Box 2098, "Merritt Island, Fl.", 32952, Mr. Michael Dalton AUG, P.O. Box 1377, "Rapid City, S.D.", 57709, Ms. Roxann Pappas You can name this file ADDRESS.DAT and remember, since this is not a .DOC file, it will be stored in ARCHIVE under GENERAL rather then DOCUMENT. This is a .DAT file. Notice the spaces inserted after the commas in the above data file. These spaces are not necessary, but were inserted to diagram that every name and address does not have to be on one line. Notice how the TPUG Magazine line has more information then can actually fit on one line. You will receive correct operation, as long as you insert a carriage return at the end. The above file contains six addresses and will result in the printing of six letters. A data file may consist of more values, and is only limited by the amount of space on your diskette. The values on every line should always be in the same order to correspond with the order of the variables in the .RV command on the letter. For example, you would not want to put Mr. Bill Hogsett in the place of CA-Aug because when your document printed out it would have Mr. Bill Hogsett in the place of company rather than in the place of name. If you did not know the zip code for one address, you would have to enter a comma, space, comma (, ,) after the value, so as to NOT confuse the order Mail Merge reads the items. For example, instead of the AMUSE address containing a zip code, it would look as follows: AMUSE, 151 1st Street, "New York, N.Y.", , Mr. Joe Lowery IMPORTANT This rule MUST be applied to any variable you decide to omit. If you do not type a comma, space, comma (, ,) in place of the zip code you do not know, then Mail Merge would have inserted Mr. Joe Lowery in the place of your zip code. Instead, a space will be inserted in the place of the zip code. Check the data file carefully to make sure you insert each value correctly along with the proper amount of commas and spaces. You should be familiar with the .DF and .RV Dot Commands by now. At this time you may find it necessary to experiment with them just to get more practice before continuing on to the remainder of Mail Merge Dot Commands. Chapter 3 The .AV Dot command (Ask for Variable) asks the user for the data value of a variable. For example, if you inserted a .AV NAME in your document, when Mail Merge encountered the Dot command, you would be prompted to type the insertion as follows: NAME? You will be able to insert variable information yourself with the .AV Dot command. You could have a letter similar to the following : .AV=DATE .AV=COMPANY .AV=ADDRESS1 .AV=ADDRESS2 .AV=ADDRESS3 .AV=NAME .AV=BALANCEDUE .AV=TOTAL &DATE& &COMPANY& &ADDRESS1& &ADDRESS2& &ADDRESS3& Dear &NAME&: Please note &BALANCEDUE& was due in last week. We are sure this is a simple oversight and just wanted to let you know that &TOTAL& is now your new balance because of the recent shipment you received. Thank you, Your Friendly Distributor You will be prompted as Mail Merge encounters the commands, for the following information: DATE? COMPANY? ADDRESS1? ADDRESS2? ADDRESS3? NAME? BALANCEDUE? TOTAL? Depending on the information you supply, your letter should print out similar to this: August 20, 1986 Pretend Company, Inc. 1.27 Online! Street Analyze!, Fl. 33333 Dear Mr. Scribble!: Please note $200.00 was due in last week. We are sure this is a simple oversight and just wanted to let you know that $400.00 is now your new balance because of the recent shipment you received. Thank you, Your Friendly Distributor The above document will print one at a time each time it is used with Mail Merge. If you need to print more then one at a time, go to the Print pull down menu and highlight the Copies option with the right mouse button. Select the number of copies you will need at the prompt. This will allow you to get as much repetition of a document as you like. If you wanted a prompt to appear in a certain way, you could instruct the variable to do so. For example, if you had a .AV=ADDRESS2 and wanted the prompt to appear: Enter ADDRESS2 as City, State: To receive this prompt, you would need to enter the Dot command as follows: .AV="Enter ADDRESS2 as City, State:", ADDRESS2 So, to get a prompt to say exactly what you want, just surround it with quotation marks. You may need to specify the maximum length of a address, zip code, name, or any other information you may place in your documentation. To familiarize yourself with how to specify maximum length, review the following: .AV=ZIPCODE, 5 .AV="Enter Name as Last, First, Middle:", Name, 30 .AV=Company, 20 The maximum number of characters to be entered is limited only to the portion of the screen width remaining after the prompt. In .AV=ZIPCODE, 5 you will not be permitted to enter more than 5 characters. The number specified is the maximum amount of characters you may enter for that prompt. Chapter 4 The use of the .SV Dot command is important when you have the same information appearing in several locations of your letter, or you plan to use the same terminal all day to type out several documents. For example, let us presume you will have a date on each letter you print out for one day. You could, instead of creating a date file with a date, or inserting a date every time, use a .SV (Set Variable) within the document. .SV=DATE, August 20, 1986 Suppose you had to have the words Scribble and Analyze! appear in several places of a document. You could do as follows: .SV Product1, Scribble! .SV Product2, Analyze! Place these commands at the beginning of your document, inserting &Product1& and &Product2& throughout the document, wherever you want Scribble! and Analyze! to appear. Later, if you need to use this letter, but wish to have different insertions, simply edit your .SV commands to display what you want. Chapter 5 You should now be familiar with how Mail Merge operates. Facts to Remember .DF ( Data File ) .RV ( Read Variable) .AV ( Ask for Variable) .SV ( Set Variable) Surround any text containing commas with quotation marks. ("New York, N.Y.") Never use ampersands (&) in Dot commands. End each line of information with a carriage return symbol. (AMUSE, 151 1st Avenue, "New York, N.Y.", 10003) Place values and variables in the same order. Put comma, space, comma, in place of omitted text. Variable names can be letters and numbers, but must never have spaces between them. (ZIPCODE or BALANCEDUE)