Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!network.ucsd.edu!weber!jon From: jon@weber.ucsd.edu (Jon Matousek) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: merge quotes in Word 4 -- Try Nisus' Mail Merge Summary: Nisus' new robust mail merge. Message-ID: <4088@network.ucsd.edu> Date: 27 Nov 90 20:32:45 GMT References: <14864.9011201902@s4.sys.uea.ac.uk> Sender: news@network.ucsd.edu Reply-To: jon@weber.ucsd.edu (jOn mAtOUsEk) Organization: Paragon Concepts, Inc. Lines: 49 Nntp-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu Keywords:mail merge nisus word In article <14864.9011201902@s4.sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway CMP RA) writes: >I recently asked here: > >> When I do a Print Merge in Word 4, it complains if it finds unmatched >> merge quotes (the option-backslash and shift-option-backslash characters). >> Reasonable enough, but what do I do if I want to use those characters as >> characters, rather than as merge command delimiters? > >I received a reply from someone at Microsoft, saying it isnt possible >(but that a future version of Word may let you specify which characters >to use as merge quotes). Ah well. In Nisus 3.0, you can do the following: << Set left="<<" >> after assigning << to the variable "left" you can then use it to obtain a left merge quote; e.g. <>. (After banging around in Word 4 I verified that Word will not do this.) I believe there should be no problem with the right merge quote in Nisus and you can use it directly. Nisus 3's mail merge is fairly robust as MacWorld Australia pointed out in a recent article. In the past, they had used Word's mail merge to create large product indicies ("...a few hundred kilobytes"). The article complains how Word chokes on unmatched quotes ("") in the data file causing them much headache. Then they tried Nisus 3's new (Word compatible) mail merge facility. "...Nisus swallowed the entire database in one pass for all the software entries and another for the hardware entries, without a single error. We could not believe it. The time saving over last year had been in the order of eight hours..." Don't believe them, try it out for yourself. E-mail me your name and address for a free Nisus 3 demo disk. Any questions call Paragon's free tech. support. 800-922-2993. Cheers, -jOn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- %% SoftwareEngineer: jOn mAtOUsEk; Internet: jon@weber.ucsd.edu %% Bitnet: jmatousek@ucsd Paragon Concepts, Inc. AppleLink: D0405 990 Highland Drive, #312 Solana Beach, Ca. 92075 Voice: (619)481-1477 USA FAX: (619)481-6154 ==========================================================================