Brian Dunning's FileMaker Custom Functions

MailMergePlus ( text ; highlight )

Mailmerge function that preserves formatting of source text

  Average rating: 4.0 (45 votes) Log in to vote

Peter Vinogradov   Peter Vinogradov - Show more from this author

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  Sample input:
MailMergePlus ( "Dear <>, Welcome to <>..."; 1)
  Sample output:
Dear John (in blue), Welcome to Cambridge University (in blue)...

  Function definition: (Copy & paste into FileMaker's Edit Custom Function window)

A recursive function that replaces bracket-enclosed (<<>>) formulae or field references with evaluated results. Works similarly to Mike Duncan's "MailMerge" function (http://www.briandunning.com/cf/438).

Because it does not evaluate the entire output string, This method preserves formatting of the source text (including the format of the merge field/formula based on the format of the first bracket).

The "highlight" switch is used to return a blue coloration for the results of any merge fields/formulae. If this parameter is set to null ( "" ), then no special formatting is applied. This feature is useful for giving users a way to easily check the output of their merge letter.

Edit: Oops, just discovered that my merge formula is very similar (coincidentally, I swear) to the one in this function: http://www.briandunning.com/cf/826
That one uses getfield() instead of evaluate, which is a good way of restricting the functionality so that users can't execute arbitrary calcs.
Edit 3-12-09: Thanks to Nick Lightbody for pointing out that the original formula chopped off the first two characters of the text if no merge fields <<>> are present. I have revised accordingly.

 

Comments

Nick Lightbody   Nick Lightbody, Deskspace Systems Limited
Mar 12, 2009
Very useful being able to switch the hilite on and off.

However - it doesn't quite work right if the first characters in the string are not "<<" when it removes the first two characters.
 
Thomas Seidler   Thomas Seidler, London
Apr 20, 2012
You've done a top function here Peter, only barbarians won't appreciate it, I removed highlight thing, but ability to quickly and properly evaluate *anything* in <<merge brackets>> is awesome.

I'm using it for regular emails with multiple occurences of the same date in various formats - I used to keep not updating one or another of the dates - about 5 places in email (subject, headers, body etc), and now I just have a date in a field, and use some form of <<FormatTimestamp(myDate;"M jS")>> etc.

Very very useful. I would have had to write it myself otherwise. Thanks, Tom
 
Mike   Mike, North Carolina
Feb 13, 2013
Fantastic cf.
However, it's easy to send this into an infinite loop:

field: "Hello World <<field>>"
MailMergePlus ( "<<field>>" ; "" )

One possible solution:

In "newtext = ", instead of just highlightMF, escape << and >>:

Substitute ( highlightMF ; ["<<" ; "\\<\\<" ] ; [">>" ; "\\>\\>" ] )

Then at the end, unescape << and >>

If ( moreMfs ; MailMergePlus (newtext ;highlight) ; Substitute ( newtext ; ["\\<\\<" ; "<<" ] ; ["\\>\\>" ; ">>" ] ) )
 
mark woytovich   mark woytovich, ignotum inc
Dec 18, 2019
Weird... I'm having a problem with this CF in a newly created file. It will not "merge" when there is >1 set of <> merge elements. I have been using this CF elsewhere with great success.

For example this yields nothing, but when I remove <> for example, it works for what is left.


<>
Message goes here.
<>



Anyone have any ideas?
 
mark woytovich   mark woytovich, ignotum inc
Dec 18, 2019
so that when I entered my placeholders surrounded by << and >> it substituted out what I typed... I hope you understand what was supposed to be the example.
 
mark woytovich   mark woytovich, ignotum inc
Dec 18, 2019
And I just found that the "MailMerge" CF works....
 

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