Mail Merge

OpenOffice.org 2.0.2

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Frank Loehmann	September 28, 2005	Final
Applies to	OpenOffice.org Writer
Task ID(s)	i51946, i51947
Category	Feature
Product Version	OpenOffice.org 2.0

Abstract

The Mail Merge functionality will be slightly changed due to new facts coming out of usability studies.

i-Team Members (The specification owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Frank Loehmann / Christian Jansen	fl@openoffice.org Cj@openoffice.org
Development	Oliver Specht	Os@openoffice.org
	Tino Rachui	Tra@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Hasan Ilter	Hi@openoffice.org
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	Ufi@openoffice.org

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Frank Loehmann	September 27, 2005
Development	Oliver Specht	September 26, 2005
	Tino Raccui	September 28, 2005
Quality Assurance	Hasan Ilter	September 28, 2005
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	September 26, 2005
String Review	Falko Tesch	October 05, 2005

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial Draft	FL	09/23/2005
1.1	Work on i-Team feedback	FL	09/27/2005
1.2	Finalization	FL	09/28/2005
1.3	Final	FL	10/05/2005

Contents

Glossary	1

Motivation	1

Detailed Specification	1

1Step 2 of Mail Merge Wizard: Select Document Type	1

2Step 3 of Mail Merge Wizard: Insert Address Block	1

1General changes to Insert Address Block page	1

2Changed Behavior for "Select Address List" Dialog	2

3Mail Merge: Suppress Blank Lines in Address Block Feature	4

References	4

Glossary

Term	Description
Mail Merge	A function of some word processing software that produces multiple instances of a document by substituting different text strings from a database in place of certain field markers. This is often done with mass mailings.

Motivation

OpenOffice.org 2.0 introduced a new mail merge implementation. This specification defines some slightly improvements for the wizard coming out of new usability tests.

Detailed Specification

Step 2 of Mail Merge Wizard: Select Document Type

The following is changed for OOo to avoid confusion, because e-mail is a StarOffice only feature:

hide step 2 of Mail Merge Wizard

hide the option "Send merged documents as E-Mail " of step 8

hide Tools -> Options ->Writer -> Mail Merge E-Mail Tab

Step 3 of Mail Merge Wizard: Insert Address Block

The following will be changed in OOo:

General changes to Insert Address Block page

The match field button has become a separate sub step (new no. 3)

The all over dialog size is increased to cover this new step

Sub step no. 3 in the past has become no.4

Initially only the first sub step "Select Address List" is enabled. If an address list has been chosen all steps are being enabled.

'Next' button is disabled until all fields, currently used the active address block, have been assigned to a column header of the data source

Illustration 1 Third step of the Mail Merge Wizard showing options for address block configuration

String List

Item	English	German	Comments
Text for step no. 3	Match the field names used in the mail merge to the column headers in your data source	Ordnen Sie den Feldern, die für den Serienbrief benutzt werden, Spaltentitel aus der Datenquelle zu.	
Text Field	4. Check if the address data matches correctly.	4. Überprüfen Sie, ob alle Adressdaten zugeordnet sind.	FL: Change for OOo 2.0.1
Text Field	< not yet matched >	< noch nicht zugeordnet >	FL: Change for OOo 2.0.1

Changed Behavior for "Select Address List" Dialog

No address list is preselected

Selecting an address list displays "Connecting to data source..." in the middle of the "Table" column" field. (see screenshot Illustration 2). After connecting to the data source has been finished, the table name of the data source is shown in the Table field instead the progress text. If the data source offers more than one table, the Select Table dialog appears automatically.

Illustration 2 Select Address List Dialog showing progress when connecting to a data source

During the connect progress the mouse pointer is a wait cursor.

If more than one table has been found, the "Select Table" dialog appears automatically on top of the Select Address List dialog with the first Table preselected. (see screenshot Illustration 3)

Illustration 3 Select Table dialog appears automatically in front of called Select Address dialog

OK -> Adds Table To "Select Address List" dialog

Cancel -> Aborts the Select Table dialog and the first table of the data source is set as default table for the Select Address List dialog.

Strings

Item	English	German	Comments
Select Address List Dialog: Progress Text in Table field	Connecting to data source...	Mit Datenquelle verbinden...	

Mail Merge: Suppress Blank Lines in Address Block Feature

The address block shows a blank line if all fields of an address line are empty. A new checkbox "Suppress lines with empty fields" allows to suppress those empty line in the address block automatically. The check box is checked per default and gets disabled if the address block feature (sub step 2) gets disabled.

Strings

Item	English	German	Comments
Select Address List Dialog: Progress Text in Table field	Suppress lines with just empty fields	Zeilen aus leeren Feldern unterdrücken	

References

General Wizard Specification: http://specs.openoffice.org/installation/wizards/Wizards_NewConcept.sxw

the original feature specification for OOo 2.0: http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/mail_merge/mailmerge_specification.sxw

FL

Since the E-mail option for mail merge is a StarOffice only feature, OOo users were confused by the just disabled E-Mail option.

FL

In OOo 2.0 the option was just disabled, so the user was wondering how to enable the option.

http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/mail_merge/mailmerge_specification_pp1.sxw

Mail Merge Wizard

4

Frank Loehmann

2004-02-20T09:29:08