Issue 7066

Are there anyone who know of a template for this - or similar autotool. 

Agreed. The current merge tools as of 644_m4 are an improvement on 
the functionality in 1.0, but it's much too awkward. A Lotus-style 
wizard approach or the 3-step breakdown MS Office uses are both 
better, though both could bear improving on.

Some key issues:

1. Too many ways to insert and select fields, each with their own 
feature sets. The Mail Merge tabbed dialog has different features 
from the Insert Field pallete which in turn has different features 
than the Data Source drop-down panel. All should offer the same 
degree of drag-and-drop of field codes onto a document or a way to 
toggle between the three modes.

2. No preview mode showing live data in place of fields. I've filed 
an issue on this.

3. Poor CSV support. As of now CSV data sources are a subset of 
delimited text data sources, and handled badly as such. CSV should be 
a built-in mode selectable with a single click and no need for 
tweaking, rather than requiring the end-user to "define" what a CSV 
is using the custom delimited file tab, especially because that tab 
doesn't allow, for instance, comma delimiters AND comma thousands-
place markers at the same time. CSV is something specific, namely 
double-quoted elements delimited by commas.

4. Why require definition of a permanent data source to do a merge? 
The permanent data sources are nice, but many many times users in the 
real world just want to merge from a file once and will discard the 
file afterward. It should be possible--even EASY--to pick a tabular 
data source (CSV, spreadhseet, DBF, whatever) and go straight into 
dropping fields into the working document. Requiring users to set up 
a data source first creates several extra steps and is confusing when 
reuse isn't going to happen.

5. I'm mystified by the distinction between merging to a document, to 
envelopes, to business cards and to labels. When I tried merging to a 
Avery 4-up postcard stock I gave up after a while because I couldn't 
figure out how to apply the same layout to all the cards on a page 
and advance to next record with each card. When I use the bundled 
business-card template, there's a floating "synchronize cards" 
palette that copies the layout to all sections on the page. I found 
no way to do that with my choice of stock.

6. When merging to files, the current UI creates a separate output 
document for each data record, so if you're making 30 envelopes, 
you're creating 30 saved files of one envelope each. This has its 
uses, but I think many, many, many people would prefer the 
(defaultable) option of being able to merge to a single 30-page 
document. It's sure easier to print or tweak  the result that way.

-- Steve Koppelman

os->cj: Please use this as additional input for the next mail merge
changes. 

changed to 2.0

started to create the first steps for new Mail Merge.

I strongly agree, especially with topics 
(4) "ad hoc data source" needed
and
(6) "mail merge to single file"
an important use case for this would be a database report!!!
(page breaks switched off)

Reassigned to Bettina.

Adding dependency:

Issue 10760 - Include option to hide blank lines when generating labels

Sorry, had too many Issues open at one time.  Please ignore the last
comment

closing issue 19116 as duplicate therefore replacing the issue in the
depends-field

Hello Christian, as you are the feature-owner for mail merge (you own
the concerning PCD-task), this one goes back to you and keeps on your
owner.

I'll close this task, but all comments are moved into task 20057. This is the
main Mail Merge Task for OO.o 2.0

.