Merge printing

While merge printing is a small feature of the Premvet 5 software, it can be a very useful marketing tool. You can use it, for example, to send a newsletter to all your cat-owning clients, or a list of special offers to farm clients, equine clients, dog owners and so on.

It works in conjunction with the reporting features of Premvet 5. In many cases, you have the option to output the results of a report to a file. Let's say you have selected a certain range of clients using one of the listing options in the 'Client List' menu. Here you can be very specific about the kinds of clients you wish to select. For example, 'All small animal clients who own a dog which is a German shepherd dog that is male over 5 years old'. Instead of printing the details of clients who match this search criteria, you can save the details to a file on your computer's hard drive. Using the Merge Printing option you can 'merge' the details you have just saved with another file which contains the text of a letter you want to send to these particular clients. This letter will be created using reserved words as placeholders for the specific client details in each case, such as their name and address, their pet's name etc., etc.

If you have a Windows PC networked onto the system you may find it easier to use the Microsoft Office Desktop tools to manipulate the data files for merge printing. This is explained at the end of this section.

The process is similar to that employed by the marketing companies who write to you on a regular basis to tell you there's a chance you've won £50,000. The body of the text, for example, "If you return this reply slip within 14 days, you will qualify for an additional bonus of £15,000", is exactly the same whoever receives the letter, but the personalised bits are read from a database when each letter is printed, so:

Congratulations [title][lastname]!!!, you've won a chance to
enter our prize draw for £50,000.  Simply complete the following
questionnaire on fine cheeses....

Congratulations Mr Humphreys!!!!, you've won....
Congratulations Mrs Lumps!!!, you've won...

In this chapter we will first discuss how you can create your files of client details (your 'data' file), how you create your generic letters using reserved words and how the two can then be 'merged'. Finally we'll include some example uses of merge printing.

Chapter contents

Creating and saving client data files

There are three reporting functions within Premvet 5 that can save their results to external files: Client Lists, Overdue Recalls and the customised reports you create with the Report Generator. In addition, any of the CSV files created for exporting data can be used with this option.

As an example we'll use the Address labels option from Client Lists. When selected Premvet 5 displays a selection menu, like the one below:

1.   Client range    : All
2.   Report will be  : Printed
3.   Client types    : SA
4.   Species         : CANINE       5.  Breed         : GSD
6.   Status          : Ignore       7.  Status Ignore : None
8.   Sex Field       : M            9.  Surg. No.     : Ignore
10.  Notes Field     : Ignore      11.  Herd Type     : Ignore
12.  Animal Age      : >5          13.  Send Bill     : Ignore
14.  Debt Age        : >0          15.  Debt Age from : Last seen 
16.  Related animals : Included    17.  Labels For    : All
18.  Weight          : Ignore      19.  Insured       : Ignore
20.  Mileage         : Ignore      21.  Colour        : Ignore
22.  Address         : Ignore      23.  Balance       : Ignore

It's here that you select the search criteria to pick out the clients you wish to identify. We have set the screen above to search for the German shepherd dog owning clients that we mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, e.g.:

All (1) small animal (3) clients who own a dog (4) which is a German shepherd dog (5) that is male (8) over 5 years old (12).

Normally, when you are happy with the selection you press RETURN, and the address labels will be printed. However, we do not want to print address labels, we want to save the client details the report identifies to an external file. To achieve this, we need to change option 2, which currently reads:

2.  Report will be : Printed

When we select this option in order to change it, Premvet 5 prompts:

Do you wish to print this report (Y/N/F) [Y]

Enter file name to store it under [names]............

When you are using the Client List option, Premvet 5 always suggests the default filename 'names'. Accept this name if you like, or enter a unique one so there is no chance of someone inadvertently overwriting your data while you still need it e.g. gsd5.

Once the name has been entered the system will check to see if a file with the same name already exists. If so, a warning will be given asking whether you wish to continue or not. If you continue the old copy of the file will be destroyed.

The report will then be displayed on the screen and stored in the file. For the examples given in this guide we will use the default filename names.

Note: If you used a different filename, make a note of it at this point so you can refer to it when you want to 'merge' files.

Note: To avoid possible confusion with external word processors when exporting merge data, the data file you are writing to will be erased BEFORE any new data is added.

We'll cover additional methods of creating data files, using Overdue recalls and the Report generator for example, later in the chapter.

Creating the generic letter

The letter file contains the body of the text you wish to send to each client, and the reserved words which will be replaced with client specific details when each letter is printed.

To create the letter file you must use one of the Text editors. The process is similar to creating recall and definition files. Start a new document, (taking care to set the document length to that of the paper you are using if you are using the old BDS editor). Remember to make a note of the document name, as you will need to refer to this later. (If you are unsure about these steps, or any of the reserved word instructions that follow in the next few paragraphs, refer to Section 21 for more details.)

Now type the body of your text, including the appropriate reserved words where they are needed, for example:

Dear &client, we notice from our records
that your dog &animal has not....

When we have completed the final step and merged our data with our letter, the reserved words will be replaced with information from our data. For example, the first letter printed may read:

Dear Mr Tim Hardy, we notice from our records
that your dog Zoomer has not....

Dear Mr Bing Lightly, we notice from our records
that your dog Norman has not....

Reserved Words In Merge Printing

KEYWORD	LISTS	RECALLS
&client	Client name	Client name
&animal	Animal name	Animal name
&address1	Address line 1	Address line 1
&address2	Address line 2	Address line 2
&address3	Address line 3	Address line 3
&address4	Address line 4	Address line 4
&date	Today's date	Today's date
&ref	Client number	Client number
&species	Species	Species
&recall	---	Recall type
&lastrec	---	Last done date
&overdue	---	Number of days overdue
&breed	Breed	---
&bal	Amt outstanding	---
&lpaid	Date last paid	---
&dage	Age of the debt	---

Data Files from the Report Generator

Because the Report generator can be customised, the type of data available following each report will be different. You may not have used selection criteria which include financial information such as 'Amount outstanding' or 'Date last paid', for example. Because of this, the reserved words will also vary according to each report you produce, so they cannot be printed in the table above. However, when you run a customised report using the report generator, Premvet 5 will print a summary page and the available reserved words will be detailed on the summary.

Each selected item will be allocated a reserved word automatically. When you select items to printout, the order in which they are selected is the order they are printed, we can use this to allocate &'number', e.g. &1 Client number, &2 Client name, etc. to each item. The reserved word is shown on the summary beside the appropriate fields.

NOTE: You don't need to select the client number as this will automatically be included.

So, the letter file created to be used with a customised report will contain the reserved words &1, &2, &3 as appropriate.

Reserved Words for CSV files

CSV files have different reserved words depending on the option that generated them.

You can get a list from the Mail Merge option:

• Set the Data File to the CSV file you wish to merge
• Set the Letter File to CSV
• Run the report

Once you have created a data file and a letter file, you can merge the two to create personalised letters for the selected clients. Merge printing is an option on the Client Lists sub menu. When selected, Premvet 5 will display:

1.  Data file      : text/names.dat
2.  Letter file    : text/letter.def
3.  Report will be : Printed
4.  Data file type : Client List

1. Data file

The data file is the name of the file stored on the hard disk that contains the list of clients to whom the letter will be sent. In the section above, we stored the results of our search for German shepherd dog owning clients to the file names.

Note: Under Unix the case (whether it is in capitals or lower case) of the filename is important, and 'NAMES' is a different file from 'names'. The name of the report generator data file is given on the summary page for that report.

2. Letter file

The letter file is the name of the file created with the text editor, which contains the body of the letter you wish to send to your clients and the reserved word placeholders.

There are two other options available to you at this point.

• LIST
  If the filename 'list' is entered the system will list all clients contained in the specified data file. Note the system will indicate the letter file 'list' is not found - Ignore this message. As in the above data file the case of the filename is important. Only the 1st 15 characters of the 1st four filds will be lists, however it ensure you have the correct data file.

• CSV
  If CSV is entered the system will list the 1st line of the file which usually contains all the field names. It is this name you would use for reserved words.

3. Report will be:

Select as appropriate whether to print or display.

4. Data file type

We need to tell Premvet 5 which type of report we used to generate the data file indicated at point 1. In this case, our 'names' file was generated using the 'Client Lists'. The other options are 'Overdue recalls', Generic CSV and 'Report generator'. You should select as appropriate.

Once you have selected the appropriate criteria, press return to start the merge printing run. One letter is produced for each entry in the data file, i.e. if the data file contains 10 clients then 10 letters will be produced. When the run has finished you will be returned to the menu.

Overdue Recalls

Overdue recall will only generate a list of clients meeting the criteria specified and will not normally generate the standard recall letter. However, the results of the report can be stored to a file so that the that you can send letters to these clients using the merge printing process described above.

To store the output of the program onto a file on the disk, select Option 2 (Recalls will be) and select the 'F'ile option.

Once you have stored the file to disk, you can create a merge printing run in exactly the same way as the 'Client Lists' file type described above.

Labels and merge printing

If you are sending letters which are exactly the same to a number of clients, and which do not contain any customisation (i.e. reserved words in the letter file) you can still use the merge printing option to generate them.

However, it would be quicker to print (or photocopy) multiple copies of the original letter and then use the Address labels option in the Client lists menu to produce address labels to attach to the envelopes.

Merge printing can also be used to customise labels - you merely set up the letter file to print using a label layout. There are just a few point to consider:

• The labels must have 7 lines of text printed on them comfortably.
• You will need to leave 2 blank lines before or after the text.
• From the above points you can see that the document length for labels must be 9 (or multiples of 9, if you plan to print two labels or more for every client).

You could, for example, set up the letter file to print two labels, one containing the address of the client and the second containing information for the client. In the example below we are using this method to invite clients to a party, sticking one label on each side of a postcard:

&client
&address1 
&address2
&address3
&address4




Dear &client
The partners  would like to invite
you to a wine and cheese 'at home'.
This will be at the surgery on the
12th of June to help us celebrate
being in practice for 10 years.
We hope you will be able to attend.

The data files generated by the various export options have a 'standard' format that can be used with other applications. There are three ways you can do this:

Point the other application at the data file

If you are using a Unix application, point the app at /u/vetdata/text/name-of-the-file or if you have VisionFS setup with drive mapping - point the Windows application at the mapped drive and select using the Windows selection box.

Use the Windows Connectivity link

This is an option on the Text Utilities menu that will automatically call up a copy of MicroSoft Excel with the data file already loaded.

You can also use the Copy option on this menu to copy the file to a dos formatted floppy disk.

Create a Microsoft Word link

Create a 'link' between a Windows document (in this case it would be a Word Mailmerge file and the data file, in this case one of the csv files e.g. recall.csv. Add this to the menu and it can be merged time after time.

Copy the file to a floppy disk

If you do not have network access to the Unix machine you will have to use this option.

Use the doscp command to copy the required file on a floppy disk e.g.
doscp -r /u/vetdata/text/names.dat a:.
Take the disk to the machine that the application is on, load it and run.