Author Topic: Custom Mailing Label Fields (Read 1913 times)

kaysea · January 23, 2008, 09:18:20 am

There were a few much older posts about this topic...but I thought I should start a new thread rather than use the older posts.

I work at a University and am evaluating CiviCRM for use in my department. We will need to have other custom fields appear in our mailing labels (mainly the contact's title and special coding for internal university mailings). The other posts said that the current version doesn't do that, but that 2.0 will. I just checked out the 2.0 alpha sandbox and it still doesn't look like you can add custom fields to mailing labels. Any news on when that becomes possible? This issue could be a deal-breaker for us being able to use it.

On a bright note...I do really like the functionality I've seen so far and really hope we can use it. Thanks.

geilhufe · January 23, 2008, 01:03:21 pm

#1 You should be able to add your custom fields to the template here:
https://sandbox.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/setting/preferences/address

I have not tested to verify it works. The tag will look like {customField2}. Others can chime in if I have this slightly off.

One very simple, non-technical way to handle this is to:
(1) Create all your custom fields
(2) Search for the contacts you want to email, click export.
(3) Create a saved export map with all the field you need for your mailing.
(4) Use the resulting csv as the data source for a MS Word merge into labels.
Takes a bit to set up, but as a repetitive task, it is only slightly harder than clicking the mailing label button.

Dave Greenberg · January 23, 2008, 04:06:26 pm

Custom field token evaluation in Mailing Labels is NOT supported in 2.0. Have you considered using the available Supplemental Address 1 and 2 fields to store the title and internal mailing codes? These fields are available in the labels - and you can control their placement in the labels.

Your other option is to modify the code.

kaysea · February 05, 2008, 11:52:57 am

Thanks for the info. Believe it or not, we will often need more than the 3 provided address lines. I think we'll still be able to go with CiviCRM if we export a list for excel and import it into a Word mail merge. It's not ideal, but it will work. Any idea if using custom fields is something that is at least in development for the near-future?

Dave Greenberg · February 05, 2008, 02:05:22 pm

Actually there's good news on this front. Support for custom fields in mailing labels made it into 2.0. You can try it out on http://sandbox.civicrm.org - or if you're testing 2.0 locally it should be part of the latest alpha3 download.

The format for custom field tokens (for the contact record) is: {contact.custom_N} - where N is the ID of the custom field. Examples are here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Mail-merge+Tokens+for+Contact+Data

kaysea · February 05, 2008, 06:44:57 pm

Great news! I'm sold!

Dave Greenberg · February 06, 2008, 11:05:50 am

Please help CiviCRM, and your project by trying out your specific use case with 2.0 as soon as possible.

kaysea · February 13, 2008, 11:28:42 am

Well I didn't get to this before you launched the Beta 2.0....but, it worked like a charm. I added a custom text field for UNIVERSITY MAIL and added it to a couple of records for individuals on the advisory board. Added the custom token to the mailing label for my data's ID. Created mailing labels...et Voila! there were the words "UNIVERSITY MAIL" at the end of the labels for the two records I modified. Thanks!

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Author Topic: Custom Mailing Label Fields (Read 1913 times)

kaysea

Custom Mailing Label Fields

geilhufe

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

Dave Greenberg

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

kaysea

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

Dave Greenberg

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

kaysea

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

Dave Greenberg

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields

kaysea

Re: Custom Mailing Label Fields