Selective Form Letter Layouts.......?

[darrencornwell]

Morning All,

Long time reader - 1st time poster!

We're sending out a lot of thank you letters which detail the kind of package a customer has signed up for. These have been set up as 'merge' letters which take the address, name, date etc from the database - all is working fine. The problem I have is that some people subscribe to say 2 of the 5 items we offer, some subscribe to 5 of the five things we offers.

I wanted to add a section in the database so that our admin girls can have a set of checkboxes:

1. Does supplier have this X

2. Does supplier have this X

3. Does supplier have this Y

Etc, etc.

If the checkbox is ticked, the form letter should add that section - the sections also have merge data in them!

When the form letter is processed, is there any way of getting it to only display some of the sections via a checkbox on the record? Or am I being a complete idiot and there is some easier method of accomplishing this - it's driving me mad!

Thanks for your help in advance!

[corn]

You could create calculation fields that hide and show the sections as appropriate, incorporating the merge data into calculation formula.

Our soon-to-be-released fmSpark module handles this type of thing with a custom function. With it you might have a text block that looks like the following:

<

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla in

neque in lacus venenatis eleifend. Duis tristique lorem ut

<> nisl. Phasellus molestie. Suspendisse

potenti. Mauris mollis nunc sit amet nibh. Proin tristique ante sit

amet nunc.

Qty: <>  Price: <>  Total: <>

Quisque laoreet, est at dapibus tempor, nunc metus elementum

dui, vitae ultrices leo orci a lacus.">>

You could do something similar using one of the custom functions available on the Brian Dunning website and the dynamic letter examples that abound on various FMP related websites, including this one.

[darrencornwell]

That's some great info -thanks. Your FMSpark looks interesting, will have to look into that when it is released!

If it's not to much trouble can you explain how I add that in, in more detail if you will? I understand what you have written but does the << >> go into the letter? How do I define each checkbox etc?

What would be really handy would be the ability to display the entire letter and have users dynamically delete / edit sections - much like they currently do with word documents.

I searched this site for 'dynamic letter' and found nothing.....

I'm nearly there....

Thanks for your help.

[corn]

Check out some of the tutorials on this site: VTC

Here's how our fmSpark system works:

We have a layout for each letter "format" which is a distinct arrangement of text and images (i.e. header, footer, sidebar, etc). We call each of these letter parts a "region" which is a separate field.

When composing a letter you type whatever you want into its corresponding region. This includes merge expressions that can refer to fields (e.g. <>), functions (e.g. <>, or custom functions we've created. You can even include entire expressions (e.g. <> ) within the region. We then create individual records for the group of recipients and, using a custom function, replace the merge tags with corresponding data.