Question about a field property.

[Rhea Vaughan]

Hello,
Here is what I have: I do up a letter once every month that I would like to send out to many addresses I have listed in my database. Each record in my database has more that one address,(all separate fields-address A, address B, address C, etc...) and I may want to send this letter to only 2 of the addresses in this particular record, for example address A, and address C. I would like to set up a field that allows me to choose "A" and "C" from several choices in the fields menu. Then when I set up a report, it will print up a letter for each of those addresses in the entire database that I have checked off in that field.
I have searched and searched the manual with no luck. The only thing I can see is a field with radio buttons, but it only allows me to choose one choice. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated :-)
Rhea.

[Jon Rupert]

RE: Question about a field property.

CREATE A FIELD IN YOUR DBF WHICH IS C-1, MAYBE CALL IT "PRINT"....THEN WITHIN A FORM OR BROWSE YOU CAN SELECT THIS FIELD WITH AN "x" THEN PRINT FROM A QUERY WHICH LOCATES THIS RECORD WITH AN "x". A LOGICAL FIELD COULD ALSO BE USED.

JON

[Rhea Vaughan]

RE: Question about a field property.

This is a great suggestion for printing one address on the letter from a record which I am aware of how to do, however, I would like to print 2 or 3 separate letters-one for each SEPARATE address IN THE RECORD.
For example, these are 3 fields in a record:
"address A"=1234 Yew Street, Apple City
"address B"=4567 Mee Street, Orange City
"address C"=8901 Thurlow Street, Banana City
I need to send a letter for this record to "address A" and "address C" only.

Let's say I have prepared a generic letter in which it's properties say to print a letter for each field checked off or chosen, in each record. Therefore for this particular record, one letter would be printed addressed to 1234 Yew Street, Apple City and a 2nd letter would be printed addressed to 8901 Thurlow Street, Banana City. Then Alpha would go to the next record, find out which address fields have been selected, and print a letter for each selection, and so on and so on...

I hope this clears things up. Thanks.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Question about a field property.

Rhea,

In a way what you want is the ability to print multiple reports (letters) from a single record in your table. I don't think you can do that, at least not in one batch.

I see three alternatives for you:

1) print all the desired Address A letters first; then loop back and print all the desired Address B letters; then loop back and print all the desired Address C letters, and so on.

or

2) Copy all the desired Address A addresses to a temp file; copy all the desired Address B addresses to a second temp file; copy all the desired Address C addresses to a third temp file; and then append the second and third temp files to the first and use it for your letters.

or

3) write an Xbasic script which steps through your records and copies all the desired addresses from each record to separate records (one address per record, thank you) in a single temp file, and base your report on it.


The difficulty you're having is that you're wanting to use a single record in your table for multiple purposes. This makes it necessary for you to have to parse single records into separate meaningful components at print time.

-- tom

[Rhea Vaughan]

RE: Question about a field property.

It would be nice to have the ability to mark fields within records rather than the entire record. I would be a dream come true to be able to do up a letter, and have the program automatically send it to pre-chosen addresses within each record, rather than go through 100's upon 100's of records and pull out addresses from each record each month. Although the problem sounds like it could be easily solved, it's becoming obvious to me that there will be no solution. Because this letter writing is the main part of my business, it is very important to me to find a solution to this problem-perhaps the newer Version may has the ability to solve the problem?
Thanks for your help anyways.

[CALocklin]

RE: Question about a field property.

Rhea,

Assuming each record has addresses A, B, and C as possible addresses to be used for a mailing and for a given record, only A and B are to be printed:

1. Is it really important to print letter B for record 'x' immediately after printing letter A for record 'x' or can it be printed say 157 letters later? I don't imagine the post office will care.

2. You were concerned about going "through 100's upon 100's of records and pull out addresses from each record each month" yet you want the ability to print only selected letters for each record. When I first read "I would like to set up a field that allows me to choose 'A' and 'C' from several choices in the fields menu." I assumed that you were going through each desired record and changing these values each month. Does this mean that once a record is set it will often remain that way for many months and only be changed for a very special reason? If not, does it mean that you want to make a global selection at print time - i.e., for this mailing I want to send to all 'A' and 'C' addresses.

If the answer to #1 is "it does NOT have to be printed immediately after" then it would be possible to print all records with one button push but you have to 'think outside the box'. That one button push would actually have to run multiple reports - 1 report for each address group (A,B,C, etc.) - but to the user it would appear to be one report because the script would run them consecutively.

The only thing that would require multiple 'print' choices/actions from the user is if you ran a Preview prior to printing. Even this can be overcome by using method 2 or 3 suggested by Tom. Any of Tom's suggestions will do what you want as far as the user is concerned. The Xbasic to do this might take a couple hours to get completely clean but I've done things with temp tables before and it really isn't that bad.

If I had to make the choice for an app I was building, I would use method 3 because it requires only one intermediate (temp) table, one loop to copy the records, and one report layout.

I don't have time to script something like this for you because of demands from paying customers - but if you can't figure it out and are willing to pay for a couple hours, e-mail me.

[Rhea Vaughan]

RE: Question about a field property.

I know this database sounds rather strange, so I will tell you exactly what it's about. I have a database for 2 highrise resident buildings containing over 400 records (each record being info on each suite-for example suite #, parking stall #, owners names, tenants names, etc...) Each record has 3 addresses-the owners address who lives off site, the tenants address who lives in the suite, and the address of the Property Manager who looks after the suite. Some suites prefer that all correspondance is sent only to the owners (address A) and the Property Manager (address C), and other suites prefer that all correspondance be sent only to the tenants of the suite (address B), and so on... So as you can see, the information in each record is set unless otherwise requested. Therefore, copying and printing for all "address A" fields would not work for me because I don't need to send a letter to all the folks listed in the "address A" field. This is where I wish I could "mark" the appropriate fields in each record, so only the "marked" fields would have a letter printed.
Rhea.

[Rhea Vaughan]

RE: Question about a field property.

Ureka, I have an idea!
What if I create 3 fields for each record, "Owners address", "Tenants address", and "Property Manager's address". I will enter an address only in the fields of those who wish to receive correspondance. Then in the letter properties, created an expression to filter out only those fields that have data in them and print a letter for each address field-while at the same time ignoring those fields that are left blank. Is is possible to create an expression to do this?
Rhea.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Question about a field property.

Rhea,

I don't think the idea of having three new fields helps you more than adding a single one character wide field that contains either a "O", "T", or "P" (short for owner, tenant, property manager).

With such a field in place you could use the following expression to place the person's name in your letter (You'll have to adjust the expression for your actual fieldnames).

Let's name the new one char wide field "WhereTo", ok?


If(TblName->WhereTo = "O",OwnerName, If(TblName->WhereTo = "T", TenantName, PropMgrName))

The foregoing is a single expression and should be typed on one line. It should be defined as a new calc field in your report layout, and then the calc field dropped into your letter.

This approach assumes that every 'WhereTo' field in your table will have either an O, T, or P and that none will be blank.

Similar calc fields would have to be created for Address1, Address2, City, State, and Zip fields in the letter layout, of course.

-- tom

[Shelly Kiefer]

RE: Question about a field property.

Rhea,

I believe you want to add one field, character 3, where you would put O, T, and/or P depending on what you want to normally print. Also add one global variable to your database to keep track of what you're printing so you don't have to always create or change 3 different letters. I've attached a zip of a test database that shows you how to set this all up. Save it to a test folder and don't mix it with your production files.

Shelly

[CALocklin]

RE: Question about a field property.

OK, I decided to create a sample to show you how #3 works. See the attached zip file.

It took me about 20 minutes to build the main part and another 20 to do some cleanup and add the "print this record only" option.

Cal

[CALocklin]

RE: Question about a field property.

I didn't see this response before posting mine - my daughter came home from a vacation in the middle of my efforts so there was a rather long interruption.

This is basically Tom's method #1. It prints all owners then all tenants then all property managers.

To get Shelley's to work correctly, I had to make PrintChoice a global variable in both the script and the letter. For the example, the 'preview' makes sense but for a production implementation, it would probably be better to at least allow a 'direct print' option so the user wouldn't have to start each letter group.

Shelley's method seems 'cleaner' whereas mine uses method 3 and prints only one 'letter' so there would be only one preview. Another advantage of this is that you could review the final letter file before printing and delete any records that weren't needed. Of coures, you couldn't add missing ones.

[CALocklin]

RE: Question about a field property.

I should have said, "You couldn't add missing ones without typing them in manually or setting up a script in the main table to add them to the letter table." Anything can be done - some things are just easier than others.

[Rhea Vaughan]

RE: Question about a field property.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for all of your graciously appreciated help. I really like Tom's idea, and will try the zipped files as soon as I upgrade from version 4.03 to version 5 which I've sent away for today (unfortunately, my version doesn't recognize the file versions). What is so nice about this message board is that by using the search engine, I can find so much info to many of my questions. And if I can't find an answer and post it as a topic, I always get such great help. Thanks again!

Rhea.

[Shelly Kiefer]

RE: Question about a field property.

Rhea,
Just so you know, my files were created in version 4.03.

Shelly