Nested Table or Table row Grouping with ExecuteWithRegions (datatable) method?

[vimaljonn]

Hi,
I have a question on row grouping or even nested table. In my word template, I have a table with 3 columns. In dataset, the first column will contain a Category Name while the other columns’ rows will have names and ID as sub categories . There will be only 2 sub categories per category. So:
My dataset looks like:
Category: SubCategory: SubCategoryID
Category A SubCat A1 A111
Category A SubCat A2 A222
Category B SubCat B1 B111
Category B SubCat B2 B222
In my template, I have 3 columns. However, I would like to merge the table cells for Column 1 grouped by category. Any ideas?

[alexey.noskov]

Hi

Thanks for your request. There is no direct way to merge cells during mail merge, but you can easily emulate this. You should create template like the following:

Category	SubCategory	SubCategoryID
«TableStart:Categories»«Category»

«TableStart:SubCategories»«SubCategory»	«SubCategoryID»«TableEnd:SubCategories»

	«TableEnd:Categories»

Green table is nested table.
Then you should have two tables in datatset named Categories and SubCategories. I created sample template (see the attachment) and code for you.

// Create test datatable.
DataTable data = new DataTable("SubCategories");
data.Columns.Add("Category");
data.Columns.Add("SubCategory");
data.Columns.Add("SubCategoryID");
// Add some dummy data.
data.Rows.Add(new object[]
{
    "Category A",
    "SubCat A1",
    "A111"
});
data.Rows.Add(new object[]
{
    "Category A",
    "SubCat A2",
    "A222"
});
data.Rows.Add(new object[]
{
    "Category B",
    "SubCat B1",
    "B111"
});
data.Rows.Add(new object[]
{
    "Category B",
    "SubCat B2",
    "B222"
});
// Now let create dataset. We need to have two DataTables, one with categories,
// And another with sub categories (we alredy have this table).
// We can use DataView to get table of categories.
DataView dv = new DataView(data);
DataTable categories = dv.ToTable("Categories", true, new string[]
{
    "Category"
});
// Now we can add both tables into DataSet.
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.Tables.Add(categories);
ds.Tables.Add(data);
// Add relationship between tables.
ds.Relations.Add(categories.Columns["Category"], data.Columns["Category"]);
// Datasource is ready and we can execute mail merge.
// Open template.
Document doc = new Document(@"Test001\in.doc");
// Execute mail merge with regions.
doc.MailMerge.ExecuteWithRegions(ds);
// Save the result.
doc.Save(@"Test001\out.doc");

Hope this helps.
Best regards.