Using merge fields in your documents

Learn how to incorporate merge fields into your documents for a more personalised mailing

You can tell Docmail to include personalised pieces of data from your spreadsheet into your document by using ‘merge tags’. 

Merge tags tell Docmail where to add particular pieces of data. You can use any of the fields from your data spreadsheet in your documents, by using the format <> in the document itself. 

The opening and closing bracket characters are also important. ‘<’ is usually found on the same key as the comma, and ‘>’ is usually found on the same key as the full stop. 

Please make sure that your column headers in your spreadsheet match the name of the merge tag. 

For example, in your letter you might want to say “Dear Fred”, where Fred is someone’s first name. 

Then you would display this on your letter as “Dear <>”. 

If your spreadsheet column header is ‘Firstname’ then please enter your merge tag matches and is entered as ‘<>’. 

It will automatically use the content of the field “Firstname” from your name and address data and place it in the space where the merge tag is. 

This is called “merging”. 

These merge tags can be used anywhere in your document. 

The full list of standard Docmail merge tags you can use is shown below.

Docmail Field Name Tag to use
Title <<Title>>
Firstname <<Firstname>>
Surname <<Surname>>
companyname <<companyname>>
Telephone <<Telephone>>
mobile <<mobile>>
Address1 <<Address1>>
Address2 <<Address2>>
Address3 <<Address3>>
Address4 <<Address4>>
Address5 <<Address5>>
email <<email>>
extrainfo <<extrainfo>>
notes <<notes>>
Custom1 <<Custom1>>
Custom2 <<Custom2>>
Custom3 <<Custom3>>
Custom4 <<Custom4>>
Custom5 <<Custom5>>

If you have merge tags in your document that are not standard Docmail fields then, as long as the column headers in your data match the merge tags, these can be used by Docmail by using the ‘add custom field’ mapping option. 

Or you can name the merge tag and column header ‘Custom 1’ (through to 10) and map it to the correct one.