We have recently installed the Word product and run into a problem that I would like to get a status on. The problem deals with the merge document having conditional IF statements with the merge. This does not appear to be a problem within Word. There have been items in the forum speaking of the this problem and potential fixes. Is there a concrete date for this fix/enhancement? I can provide a document if needed.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Thank you for your interest in Aspose.Word.
The conditional IF statements processing will be available as soon as the field evaluation engine we are working on is released. I hope it will be completed in several months, unfortunately this is the most precise timeframe I can currently tell you.
There has got to be a better reply than that. This situation has been on the forum for quite a while with the same answer being used. If this item is under development then you must have a schedule for its implementation.
I am sorry but that’s exactly why I’m unable to tell you more precise schedule. Our development priorities can shift from time to time and we cannot confuse our customers by telling him exact implementation dates but having the features not implemented by those dates. The field evaluation engine is a very important and frequently requested feature so it is high in our feature list. If possible, you could move the logic from the document to the code as a workaround in the meantime.
Yes, I could move the logic from the document to the code but that would be costly on my part and also time consuming. If this is such a high priority, I am amazed that you cannot give me some kind of time frame, end of August, end of 3Q, 4thQ, early 06.
Maybe I am missing something here. In our situation we want to merge name fields, for example, salutation, first, middle initial, last, and suffix. When no saluation exists or middle name the merge field should shift over but it is currently leaving the blank spaces in the document. The same is true for addresses, there is address line 1, address line 2, city, state, zip. We don’t want to have a blank line displayed when address line 2 does not exist. There are many situations where this logic needs to be functioning. Any suggestions other than moving it from the document?
Sorry but this is the only solution at the moment. Here are some hints if you however decide to implement this.
Custom mail merge logic can be easily implemented by inserting code into merge handlers. You can read about this here:
https://reference.aspose.com/words/net/aspose.words.mailmerging/ifieldmergingcallback
Try to set MailMerge.RemoveEmptyParagraphs to true before executing mail merge.
You can attach your document to let us see what could be done in your situation.
Since I had little options, I implemented the code as a work around. The code is only being used for the most common conditions and is not intended to be a long term solution. Is there any update to having this functionality included with the component?
Sorry no updates yet. Thank you for patience.
I have to admit that this is getting a bit tiresome. In reviewing posts on the site, this functionality/feature seems to be a high priority for many but never seems to materialize. Two simple questions, is this enhancement currently being developed and is there a project plan for its development.
Aspose.Word is still a young product and there are many highly requested features that makes it hard to please all customers when we deliver some before others.
We do have a project plan as a list of features we will do, but we don’t really have dates on most of them.
Work on fields has not yet commenced and it is a major feature, it requires building some sort of an engine that can understand and evaluate field expressions, yet deal with the tree-like model of the document.
The next features out in the next few days are support for annotations (comments) and copying between documents with full formatting preserved (keep source formatting).
Thanks for your understanding.