Mailmerge/Mergefields in Aspose.slides

mudassir.fayyaz · October 21, 2020, 6:53pm

We are hopeful to offer you a working solution in the form of an example in tentatively in upcoming version. We request for your patience in this regard till the time it gets implemented in API.

nitinkhosla79 · November 3, 2020, 6:58pm

@mudassir.fayyaz Can you please provide estimated release dates for the next version?
Also, we can help provide user feedback on the beta release of this feature. Please let the product engineering team know that we are available to connect on any discussion/testing/feedback help they need. Looking forward…

mudassir.fayyaz · November 4, 2020, 12:28am

@nitinkhosla79

We have internally verified the requirements. Actually, Mail Merge technology is missing in Aspose.Slides, and there’s a reason.

Mail merge is about combining a number of data sources for mass mailings to form a letter. This feature is usually employed in a word processing document which contains fixed text (which is the same in each output document) and variables (which act as placeholders that are replaced by text from the data source). Some word processors can insert content from a database, spreadsheet, or table into text documents».

But over time, more complex concepts were introduced. Instead of simple text data, they began to use any data in fact (including binary ones).

PowerPoint is not a text editor per se, so there is no such feature as Mail Merge. However, it should be noted that there are third-party products that mimic the Mail Merge technology for PowerPoint, but they are all limited in their capabilities to varying degrees. Aspose.Slides, in turn, offers users an API that can be used to implement Mail Merge in the most appropriate way for the particular customer.

In general, the Mail Merge process requires the following steps:

Create the main document (template).
Create data source(s) to use for the merge.
Define merge fields in the main document (template).
Combine data with the main document.
Save/export.

The presence of the API makes it possible to perform all the listed steps of the Mail Merge process and even more.

We add following example as a basic template of how Aspose.Slides API can be used to perform merge operations when a number of presentations are created based on a single template based on the data provided by the database.

github.com

aspose-slides/Aspose.Slides-for-.NET/blob/master/Examples/CSharp/Presentations/Conversion/MailMergeExample.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Aspose.Slides;
using Aspose.Slides.Charts;
using Aspose.Slides.Examples.CSharp;
using Aspose.Slides.Export;
using DataTable = System.Data.DataTable;

namespace CSharp.Presentations.Conversion
{
    // In this example, based on a simple presentation template and a simplified database. We demonstrate the
    // possibility of creating a set of presentations for each of the departments of an imaginary organization.
    // Each of the resulting presentations will include the name of the department, the name of the manager,
    // the staff of the department, and the chart for the schedule of the plan.

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The example is provided with comments that can be used to extend it for further needs.