Mail Merge Format Codes

Wise Owl mail merging supports many of the default mail merge format codes.

String Format: (MERGEFIELD Description \* "UPPER")

This format is the same as the word option. Here are some examples:

Code	Input	Result
UPPER	Green eggs and ham	GREEN EGGS AND HAM
LOWER	Green eggs and ham	green eggs and ham
FIRSTCAP	Green eggs and ham	Green Eggs And Ham
CAPS (same as above)	Green eggs and ham	Green Eggs And Ham

Number Format: (MERGEFIELD Total_GST \# "###0.0")

This format is the same as the word option. This format uses the characters '$', '#', ',', '.', '0' to define the format of the number.

Here are some examples:

Code	Input	Result
0,000.0	123	0,123.0
$00.00	123.456	$123.47
####.#	123.456	123.4
0##	123.4	123

If you would like to learn more about this format or more specifically the number format strings we use internally visit https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0c899ak8(v=vs.110).aspx .

Date Format: (MERGEFIELD CreatedDate \@ "dd-mm-yy")

This format string type is the same as word. Here are some examples:

Code	Input	Result
MMMM dd, yyyy	17/05/16 9:00pm +10:00	May 10, 2016
dd-MM-yy	17/05/16 9:00pm +10:00	17-05-16
h:m:s dd-mm-yyy z	4/02/15 2:00am +11:00	2:0:0 04-02-015 +11:00
hh:mm:ss dd-mm-yy z "Apple"	17/05/16 9:25pm +10:00	9:25:00 17-05-16 +10:00

Once again if you would like to learn more about date format strings we use internally visit https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4(v=vs.110).aspx .

Below are the new merge field format options that we have added to our mail merge.

Image Format: (MERGEFIELD Our_Logo \& "54")

The number in this format type as the example above represents the image scale as a percentage. The number must be between 2 and 1500 inclusive, any more or less than this would cause an error.

For example a number of "43" would scale an image to 43% of its normal size.

Contact Format: (MERGEFIELD ContactsOfType_Client \^ "TFLK)

Note: This tag can be mixed with the string format tag, but this tag needs to be later. (MERGEIFLED \* "lower" \^ "TFL")

There are 2 main ways of retrieving the data from contacts.

The first way involves a single letter code for the main fields:

Code	Field
T	Title
F	FirstName
O	OtherNames
L	LastName
K	(KnownAs)
A	Address (single line format)

For this list there are some rules with how the fields are displayed:

These fields will be separated by spaces
If the last name is before the first name, the last name has a trailing comma
If these tags are called on a company they will be replaced with the company name.
If the address tag is used it will always be at the end of the contact info and start with 'of '.

Here are some examples of the use of the first contact format type:

Code	Result
TFLK	Mr John Smith (J. Smith)

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