When Mail merge option checkbox is checked, the driver will recognize special character sequences in the printed text to extract text information in a text file and merge.mrg file.
The recognized character sequences all start with two ‘#’ characters. Most of these ‘commands’ will cause the driver to remove or alter the printed text and write it in the merged output file in text format. This file will have the same filename as the group file, with the MRG extension. The actual name of this file will be written in the group file in the following format:
Merge Output=c:\aaaa1000.mrg
In addition, an output text file fill be generated containing the extracted text from the printed document including the mail merge characters.
The recognized command sequences are as follows:
##~~ Lines starting with these four characters and ending with “~~” will not be printed on the output image file, but written into the merged output file *.mrg.
For example, if the following string is sent to the driver:
##~~ Phone number=6031234321~~Hello Hello Hello
there will be an empty space printed in place of Mail Merge string than followed by " Hello Hello Hello" in the output image file and the following line will be added to the merged output file *.mrg:
Phone number=6031234321.
##** Lines starting with these four characters and ending with “**” will be partially printed and also written to the merged output file. If the string enclosed by the “**” marks contains an equation mark, the characters after the equation mark will be printed. Otherwise the whole string between the asterisks will be printed.
Every character between the asterisks will be written to the merged output file.
For example, if the following string is printed with the driver:
##** Addressee=Company Name**
the following will be written to the merged output file:
Addressee=Company Name
and the following line will be printed on the output image file:
Company Name
All of the above command lines must be printed as one continuous string from left to right. If they are printed one part at a time using several separate printing function calls, ( first printing “##~~” and then the rest of the line ) the driver may not be able to correctly recognize them.
An application print in segmented if one change font type or font size in the text. The Mail merge string should be one font type, same font size and color.
The mail merge file *.mrg will also contain page delimiter information to mark where the new page is started. The page delimiter is an empty line, the ‘Page 1:’ text (where the number is the current page number) and another empty line in the *.mrg file:
Page 1:
Page 2:
Page 3:
This information will appear in the Mail Merge file even if there is no mail merge information in that particular the page.
To activate the Mail Merge feature of the printer driver, one must first enable the Text Output feature of the printer driver, than clicking on the “Mail merge”.
See screen capture below: