Mail Merge Data Sources

In This Topic

Mail Merge Data Sources are files/databases, which contain the data that should be used by the mail merge process. NOV Text Editor currently provides support for the following data source formats:

Access databases (*.mdb, *.accdb)
CSV files (*.csv)
Excel spreadsheets (*.xls, *.xlsx)

When needed you can easily add support for more formats by implementing the abstract NDataSourceFormat class and registering your data source format using its static Register method.

Loading a Data Source

For the mail merge feature to work you should load a data source into the rich text document's mail merge object. The code below demonstrates how to load a CSV file embedded as a resource and set some field mappings:

Load Mail Merge Data Source	Copy Code
// Load a mail merge data source from resource Stream stream = NResources.Instance.GetResourceStream("RSTR_Employees_csv"); NDataSource dataSource = NDataSourceFormat.Csv.LoadFromStream(stream, new NDataSourceLoadSettings(null, null, true)); // Create the field mappings NMailMergeFieldMap fieldMap = new NMailMergeFieldMap(); fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.CourtesyTitle, "TitleOfCourtesy"); fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.FirstName, "FirstName"); fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.LastName, "LastName"); fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.City, "City"); dataSource.FieldMap = fieldMap; documentBlock.MailMerge.DataSource = dataSource;

Load Mail Merge Data Source

Copy Code

// Load a mail merge data source from resource
Stream stream = NResources.Instance.GetResourceStream("RSTR_Employees_csv");
NDataSource dataSource = NDataSourceFormat.Csv.LoadFromStream(stream, new NDataSourceLoadSettings(null, null, true));

// Create the field mappings
NMailMergeFieldMap fieldMap = new NMailMergeFieldMap();

fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.CourtesyTitle, "TitleOfCourtesy");
fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.FirstName, "FirstName");
fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.LastName, "LastName");
fieldMap.Set(ENMailMergeDataField.City, "City");

dataSource.FieldMap = fieldMap;
documentBlock.MailMerge.DataSource = dataSource;