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Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Full Text Issue Listing |
| Summary: | Mail Merge salutation preview is incorrect | ||
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| Product: | Writer | Reporter: | cairnlin <iain> |
| Component: | ui | Assignee: | h.ilter |
| Status: | CLOSED FIXED | QA Contact: | issues@sw <issues> |
| Severity: | Trivial | ||
| Priority: | P4 | CC: | allgaeu_tobias, issues, os_ooo |
| Version: | OOo 2.0 | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | All | ||
| Issue Type: | DEFECT | Latest Confirmation in: | --- |
| Developer Difficulty: | --- | ||
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Description
cairnlin
2005-01-26 21:33:09 UTC
Reassigned to HI. Test and confirmed on the following system: Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 System Model: Dell Dimension 4300 Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz Memory: 1024MB RAM The Mail Merge wizard does show both Mr. and Mrs. Salutations despite the fact that the end product will only have one of these options shown. This does not directly effect the output, but might confuse some users as to nature of the fields. As for the custom name dialog, this surely does need a more intuitive interface. However, this might be more properly classified under “enhancements†as it is an improvement on the existing functional structure. I have shown the interface AFAIK there is a technical reason for that. HI->OS: Please comment. 1.) It's wrong that the preview shows the personalized greeting if the option is deselected. But it's not wrong to show them both. The preview has no current data to decide which is the right one to select. The resulting page hides the wrong paragraphs but the preview cannot do this. Maybe we should use some sample line that does not refer to the current settings. 2.) You're partially right. The reason is that we wanted to prevent illegal commands like "Hi Mr. Lastname" Or "Hi <Mr.> Name>" that cannot be evaluated afterwards. But you can not only insert database elements but also select a salutation, interpunction and text. Still a serious usability problem in 3.1.0. From the user's point of view, it is not at all obvious which will salutation will really be used in the letter. When I got to the "edit draft" stage, I had three saluations (male, female, and generic) - this is clearly inappropriate. It seems like the salutation block is appended, not cleared if I uncheck one option and check another... It is also far from clear what will happen if I didn't fill out the Gender field. All I really want my form letter to do is to say "Dear <Title> <Lastname>" regardless of the recipient's actual gender, or whether I've filled out the database gender field. This is almost always the right thing to do, and the present UI seems to make it harder instead of easier. [Overall, I'd rate ease of use in 3.1.0 as easier than raw Tex, but harder than LaTeX, and harder than the StarOffice/OpenOffice earlier releases.] a)Looking at this more closely, there are three salutations shown in the "Edit Document" phase. This is very confusing... In hindsight, if I ignore the (apparent) problem and proceed straight to "Personalize Document", the salutations are edited down to one per letter. b) It still makes no sense to force me to fill out a gender field for everyone in order to use a gender neutral customized greeting such as "Dear <Title> <Lastname>". However, if I check "Insert Personalized Salutation" with the default settings (female is indicated by Gender field with value blank), the "female" setting is used for everyone, which can be configured to produce the correct functional result in this case. c)I also had a crash after deleting what appeared to be "extra" text in the "edit document" stage; will submit a separate bug report when I can explain how to reproduce it efficiently. ->darford: It might be confusing to see three paragraphs with three types of greeting lines. But I can't see an alternative. Depending on the gender field one of the greetings is actually used for each address. And you don't have to define the gender field if you switch off the "Insert personalized salutation" CheckBox. The issues I can see are: - the general salutation does not contain and cannot handle data base fields. There should be a dialog to define this greeting line in a similar way as it is done for the personalized greetings. - The preview doesn't actually evaluate the gender field for each document although you can iterate over the data.My last comment was obviously wrong. Fixed in cws os133 in sw/source/ui/dbui/mmgreetingspage.cxx sw/source/ui/dbui/mmlayoutpage.cxx sw/source/ui/dbui/mailmergehelper.cxx sw/source/ui/dbui/makefile.mk The preview now processes the data the same way as the document does. The neutral greeting is active if the column assigned to "Last Name" is empty. *** Issue 61595 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** Reassigned for verification reopened, because fix cause crash in case that no mapping for the <last name> exist. fix in progress in cws os133 forgot to take over fix causes crash, because on accessing <Last Name> in database it is not checked, if a corresponding assignment exists. correct fix - changed file: /sw/source/ui/dbui/mmgreetingspage.cxx, rev. 275041 OD->HI: Checked correction of crash - please verify. Verified with cws os133 = ok *** Issue 104993 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 107589 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 107581 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** |