Batch process letter printing mail merge with differing letters based on customer status

Question

I have rather a complex scenario. 

I want to send out letters to clients.  I am happy to make a spread sheet and use a mail merge. 

However, each time a send a letter I want it to update the spreadsheet too. 

For example if Mr Smith has never been sent a letter it needs to send one, but if Mr Brown has been sent one it needs to send him letter number 2. 

I'd also like it to potentially select the letters based on an outcome that I have chosen. 

Finally I'd like it to batch print all of the outputted files, which will be (a) mail merged and (b) different depending on the stage at which the customer is at.  Is this possible or way to complex?

Answer 1

I believe that it would be possible to automate the whole scenario using Visual Basic, but using the software as it comes "out of the box" there are only some parts of it that can be done.

For example, you can use If...then...Else fields in a mail merge to interrogate the contents of a field in the datasource and then insert different text into the document, depending upon the contents of that field. 

It is not clear what the "outcome that I have chosen" means and in what way the selection would be made on the basis of that outcome, but it may also be possible to handle that by the use of If...then...Else fields.

What cannot be done with mailmerge is the updating of the spreadsheet.

However, as mentioned, it is possible to automate the process to perform some quite complex processes.  You can see some examples in the MergeTools add-in that you can download from by Windows Live SkyDrive at:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=5aedcb43615e886b#cid=5AEDCB43615E886B&id=5AEDCB43615E886B%21111