Mail Merge Improvements

AW+ has a much better (and documented) mail merge (MM) than the old AW. It still has the option that lets you type in words at print time, but the new MM is what AW should have had. Anyway, AW+ MM allows you to build and manage a “data base” of names & addresses (or whatever), and then merge that data with a document at print time. The data base can contain up to 22,292 characters, or 255 records; whichever comes first (sounds like a car). Each record can contain up to 15 fields (items of information). The maximum field size is 20 characters. Each field has a name of up to 12 characters. A default record format is supplied, and contains the following fields: last name, first name, company, title, address, 3 user-defined fields, city, state, zip code, work area code & phone, home area code & phone. You can modify the default record layout to meet your needs. You must be sure that you have it right, especially before you enter any data, because you cannot change the layout once it is entered.

You can add, change and delete records from your file, and you can append 1 file to another, as long as their formats are alike. There is not a documented method for loading non-MM files into AW+, but I think that it can be done. I’ll try it out and let you know. Data can be extracted to another disk file by using the MM feature and printing to disk. MM also allows you to build a subset of a file, which allows you to use MM on only part of your data base. An interesting “quirk” in MM involves using a hyphen in the data. MM uses the hyphen to show you the field size when you enter data, and for some reason it removes the last hyphen in a field, even when it is between two pieces of data. For example, in a phone number field with the data “503-555-1212”, you end up with “503-555 1212”. 

The only way to get around this is to make the field 1 character longer than you need. Then MM removes the trailing hyphen. 

Bonus Features

A few miscellaneous items. The double column printing feature now works with printers that cannot do reverse half line feeds. AW+ will format each page in memory and print both columns at the same time. I am having trouble making this work with a printer driver file, but it does work without one. Also, the eject feature now does a column eject rather than a page eject in double column mode. 

You can switch between lower and upper case by using the “caps” key alone, rather than having to use “shift-caps”. Support for International Characters is also provided. 

A 130XE only feature is provided to evenly distribute text among the 3 banks. Switching from bank to bank is easy, just press <START-B>. 

In addition to the AW merge file function, you can now save part of a file by marking the block to be saved. 

AW+ also uses a “global format” feature, which is a new menu option. You specify all print format options here (defaults are provided), rather than at the top of the file as in AW. You override the global format options by embedding the proper format command in your document. The global options you set are saved with the file, and are restored when you load the file. 

New Quick Reference Guide