How to perform a Mail Merge in dbFront

Question

We need to select a specific group of records and create a mail merge using a template report.

Answer 1

To perform a Mail-Merge you would create an export of the needed information to an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file, and use that export to drive a Mail-Merge using your favourite editor or Mail-Merge tool.

The export from dbFront can be dynamic or you can create a saved single button export with an imbedded filter or user prompts. For more details see Quick Exports.

You could also use a Stored Procedure to generate the Export. For more details see Run Procedure.

Once the list of recipients (Customers, Vendors, etc...) has been created then you can use your favourite editor or Mail Merge tool to generate the final mail merge.

• Microsoft Office
• Libre Office
• any of many other Mail Merge tools.

An important benefit to this separation, is that tools like Microsoft Word are well known to the office staff that are most likely to want to change the reports. This means no Developer or Administrator involvement is needed to make changes.

In the future we hope to add Mail-Merge functionality directly to dbFront using the existing Report Templates. This would be helpful for those scenarios where a single-click, quick solution is required, such as ID cards, invoices or such.