Bookmark questions....

[William F. O'Neill]

Am using Powerbuilder 8.0.4 and Sybase 12.5 , Word 97, on WINNT

I have a requirement to produce a new mail merge module for our
application. The data source is taken from 3 tables. My difficulty lies
in setting up the main document. Some of the corporations that I will be
reporting on have 5 issues, and 6 objectives. Others have 2 issues and 4
objectives. How do I set up bookmarks in the main document to accommodate
these varied reporting requirements. I could set up the main document for
the max allowable for each set of issues, and each set of objectives, but
what happens if the corporation I'm mailmerging on, has less than what I
have bookmarks for? Don't want a whole lot of whitespace in the report.
I'm familiar with mailmerging for a simple letter, but for producing a
report, this appears to be a different animal all together. Hope I've made
myself clear. If not, please ask.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Not sure I have interpreted the problem correctly, but see the "Multiple
items per condition" item under the "Special merges" section of fellow MVP
CIndy Meister's website at

http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MergFram.htm

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[William F. O'Neill]

HI Doug:

That site wasn't very helpful. Thanks anyway. I was wondering if I could
use an IF clause, something like this pseudocode: If Mergefield issue4
exists, then get and place same in bookmark, else, move on to next bookmark.
Let me know what you think.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Is there a field in the data source for the maximum number of issues and
objectives but in some cases, not all of the fields are populated.

If that's the case, for each mergefield that might be blank, you would need
to use the following field construciton

{IF {Mergefield name} <> "" "{Mergefield name}¶
" }

where the ¶ is inserted by pressing the enter key. Note that the { } are
not entered by using the key with those symbols on the keyboard, you must
use Ctrl+F9
--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[William F. O'Neill]

Thanks Doug, that's very helpful, and will try out at work on Monday.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Your later re-statement of the situation makes me think that this is
probably not the solution. That would be the case if the data is in the
following format

Corporation Objective
A Objective 1
A Objective 2
A Objective 3
A Objective 4
A Objective 5
A Objective 6
B Objective 1
B Objective 2
B Objective 3
C Objective 1
C Objective 2
C Objective 3
C Objective 4

The If..Then..Else could be made to work if you had

Corporation Objective1 Objective2 Objective3 Objective4
Objective5 Objective6
A Data Data Data
Data Data Date
B Data Data Date
No Data No Data No Data
C Data Data Data
Data No Data No Data

Even then it's a pain to set up.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP