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------- Additional comments from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Jul 29 15:23:15 -0700 2005 ------- The lack of a simple way to hide blank lines in a mail merge created by empty database fields basically makes OpenOffice almost worthless to, I'd say, 90% + of US secretaries. Every company that I've ever worked for or provided consulting to will not tolerate mail merges with blank lines in the address, etc. In addition, when a mail merge might be 500 to 1500 items, it is not cost effective to hand edit the blank lines out. Since becoming a self-employed computer consultant 2+ years ago, I have consistently had clients reject widespread rollouts of OpenOffice because it is nearly impossible for a non-technical person to send a professional looking (read no blank lines in the address sections of letters, labels, and envelopes) without manual intervention. I am pleading with you to not send OpenOffice 2.0 out the door without fixing this basic functionality issue. The steps required, currently, to hide blank lines in mail merges, labels, and envelopes that are caused by blank fields makes it impossible for all but the most technical to make a decent merge. In case you are not familiar with U.S. mail address conventions, here are two common address label formats and examples. 1. <Title> <FirstName> <MiddleInitial> <LastName> <NameSuffix> <CompanyPosition> <Company> <StreetAddress1> <StreetAddress2> <City>, <State> <Zip> Example Mr. Vaughn L. Reid III Owner Great Big Company 1525 Gregory Street Apt. 227 Anytown, IN 99999 - 9999 2. <Title> <FirstName> <LastName> <NameSuffix> <Company> <StreetAddress1> <StreetAddress2> <City>, <State> <Zip> Mr. Joe Smith Esquire Another Big Company 2344 Big Sky Drive MailStop 44 AnotherTown, IN 34567-3445 It is quite common for an address database to mix records with 2 row (or even 3 row) street addresses with records with 1 row of street addresses. It is also quite common to have a variety of completeness for many records. For example, in a single database some records may both the <CompanyPosition> field and the <Company> filled completed others may have one of those field or neither field. This means, that, using the first address sample, you could have records that look like the ones that follow from a single mail merge. The ones with the blank lines, as you can imagine, are quite unacceptable. Here are some incomplete examples. 1. Mr. Joe Smith 124 Way Anytown, IN 43532 2. Joe Smith Owner P.O. Box 99999 New Castle, IN 47362-4149 3. Mr. Smith Big Company I Want To Impress 123 Blvd. ATown, RI 12345 As you can see, the current mail merge makes my attempts to impress my customers, etc. futile. No one would want to do business with me unless I delve into the mysteries of programming to remove hidden paragraphs or go back and manually edit my 5000 record mail merge. Please fix this extremely important issue before sending OpenOffice 2.0 out the door. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
