Creating a serial letter

If there is more than one recipient in the recipient list of a letter, it’s a serial letter.

You can create a serial letter based on a template that contains a standard text for all recipients. The word processer generates as many letters as there are correspondence recipients. The serial letters can be printed out immediately or be saved first. You can also choose whether only a single let­ter of the series is stored as a sample for the text, or all of them should be saved in the database. See also the Note on sample correspondences for serial letters.

To ensure resource-saving serial printing (the Series option is active), a separate document for each recipient is created with the help of the Generate and Print function, keeping only the currently printed document in the main memory. Memory overloads (Word, print server) and performance problems are thereby pre­vented.

It is required is that a printer is specified in the network or locally that is able to accept the commands of this func­tion. To set the printer, see also Tips on using activities.

The print progress is marked in the recipient list (Sent column), so that in case printing is interrupted, you can continue with the not yet printed letters. The system then checks whether the Sent flag is set and prints only those letters where it’s not.

1. Proceed like when creating a letter.
2. Assign several recipients. You can do this most easily in the Recipients subform.
3. If you want to have a mailing list of all recipients at the end of the letter, set the DL flag (mailing list) in the Extended section.  
4. The letter needs to be saved first.
5. If you include attachments, they are listed in the letter as such.
6. In the document selection dialog, those documents (first structure step) that are assigned in the document relation of the "for contact" or in the respective letter (under the Extended button) are already preset.
7. Select a Template and make sure to use a letter template that forces single report output (the Series option in the template field is active).
8. If necessary, create your own template in the template management and edit the text of the tem­plate that is used for the serial letter (see Adapt standard templates for series corre­spondences).
9. Click on Error check and on Address preview in the function bar (check address and address info). 

If desired, you can open the serial letter in the word processor prior to printing it.  

1. Click the Generate function. It opens the letters of the series per recipient in a separate instance of the word processor for viewing, and automatically stores a sample copy of the content to the letter. The variable PSA_CPD_XPL_MAX_APP controls how many instances of the text program may be started at most (the standard is ten).
2. Check the first letters of the series for content and appearance. If the result doesn’t meet your expectations, adapt the template of the serial letter accordingly. Close the word processer for this  ("close group" under Windows). See also Adapt standard templates for serial corresponden­ces.
3. If the result is what you wanted it to be, close the word processor and click the Generate and Print function to immediately pass the serial letter to the printer. This causes individual letters to be generated, but they are not opened in the word processer. The subject of the serial letter is automatically taken from the Subject field, the address is automatically created from the contact records. The form of address is always personal, the content is used as a text module from the template.