Base, mailmerge and conditional text

Flecks Walker · Last edited by Flecks Walker on Mon Oct 03, 2011 1:37 pm; edited 1 time in total

I have created a database of donors for a small local charity and wish to create a mailmerged form letter from it. Most of it works fine but I want to add a paragraph of conditional text dependent upon a Boolean field returning a "FALSE" value.

I have searched the program help files and the online help to no avail.

Please could someone tell me how to achieve this.

JohnV · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:39 am Post subject:

This assumes your database contains a boolean field named Boo.

Where you want the conditional text do Crtl+F2. Select the Function tab and Conditional Text. Enter the condition
Boo EQ false
and enter the desired text in the Then box. No quotation marks are required anywhere.

Flecks Walker · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:40 am Post subject:

Thanks John. I'll give that a try.

Flecks Walker · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:58 am Post subject:

No, that didn't work. At another point in the document I also inserted the name of the Boolean field and it prints "TRUE" when the field is checked but nothing when it is unchecked (ie FALSE).

Bearing that in mind, I also tried Boo != true and that didn't work either. The conditional text is never being printed.

I also tried using Databasename.Tablename.Fieldname for the condition and that didn't work either.

This is getting very frustrating and I may have to resort to two different form letters.

JohnV · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 12:10 pm Post subject:

Flecks Walker · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 12:32 pm Post subject:

Hi John,

No success with that either. I've also tried the "Hidden paragraph" option rather than hidden text, with no luck.

I'm also using 3.3 but on Windows Vista if that makes a difference.

Is there an online tutorial anywhere?

Villeroy · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 12:55 pm Post subject:

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2010/04/how-to-hide-lines-if-a-field-is-empty.html
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Flecks Walker · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 1:37 pm Post subject:

Thanks that looks useful. I'll try it with Boolean fields and let you know how well it works.
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try { succeed(); } catch(E) { tryAgain(); } finally { rtfm(); }

JohnV · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 7:12 am Post subject:

Flecks Walker · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 8:31 am Post subject:

JohnV · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:10 pm Post subject:

I doubt reinstalling OOo will help but you may want to replace the user directory which often solves weird problems.
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=12426

Flecks Walker · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:50 pm Post subject:

Flecks Walker · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 3:23 pm Post subject:

Hmmm. Well, that was a bit of a disaster! OO crashed twice whilst trying to create the mail merge text document and, once I had finally created it, proceeded to number the pages in a very strange way (1, 3, 5 etc up to 41 when there are only 22 entries in the database). Closed everything down and renamed the ....\user.old directory as ....\user then it all came good again.
_________________
try { succeed(); } catch(E) { tryAgain(); } finally { rtfm(); }

Jjacksonjackson · Newbie Joined: 09 Jan 2012 Posts: 1

Mail Merge Is Generally Used For Sending Multiple Mail While , Conditional Text Is Usually Written By Experts And They Generally Share Their Review In Detailed Manner .