MAILOUT.V94
RE:Customer List To Mailing House
How to Send a Customer List to a Mailing House
or create a mail merge file to print from Word
(Apples to Version 9.4 and higher)
The following instructions for Version 9.4 and up will put a copy of the
mailing list on a diskette that you can give to a mailing house for them
to send out a mailing. Alternatively you could use it to do a mail-merge
using MS-Word
The file is an ASCII file with each field
delimited with quote marks and separated with commas. The first line in
the file defines the order of the fields and any proficient mailing
house will be able to read this file. Note: This is NOT designed for the
mailing house to send mailing list corrections back into the Jewelry
Shopkeeper.
Once you have made the file you can either mail it to the mail-house
or you can attach the file to an e-mail message that you send to them.
From the Main Menu, choose Reports then Customer Mailing Labels.
Choose any combination of criteria such as Zip Code, Customer Type, etc.
At the very least it is useful to restrict the Zip Code range to 01000-
>99999 to ignore those customers with no zip code. If you have version
8.7 or higher, you can choose the For Total Purchases option, making
sure you choose Yes to recalculate.
Insert a blank diskette in the A: drive then choose Start Printing
Labels, choose the Sort method you want (Zip Code or Last Name) When you
are prompted to choose 1, 3 or 4 across labels, choose instead the
A:CUSTLIST.CSV option. This sends the results to a file on the floppy
diskette called A:CUSTLIST.CSV -- This is a 'Comma Separated Value Text
File' that any mailing house can process and which Microsoft Word
can read doing a Mail Merge. To see how many names are on the disk, click
on the Windows START button, choose Run and type EDIT A:CUSTLIST.CSV and
choose OK. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and look at the
line-counter at the bottom right corner to see the number of names.
Note that this A:CUSTLIST.CSV option also lets you save the result to
the computer's C: drive - the local hard drive.
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NOTE: Ignore the below instructions if the above instructions worked.
The below instructions only apply if the customer list is so large that
it didn't fit on the diskette using the simple method above.
When you are prompted to choose 1, 3 or 4 across labels, choose instead
the C:\MERGE1.CSV option. This sends the results to a file on the hard
drive called C:\MERGE1.CSV (in the root directory)
When this has finished, exit the Jewelry Shopkeeper and go to the
black and white COMMAND MENU.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you don't have a Windows JS-MENU to take you to
the COMMAND MENU, go to the DOS prompt for the drive where the Jewelry
Shopkeeper is installed and type JS and press Enter.
At the COMMAND MENU, you can view the contents of the file by typing:
VIEW C:\MERGE1.CSV
To copy the file to a diskette, go to the COMMAND MENU, insert a blank
(formatted) diskette into the A: drive (or substitute B: below for the
B: drive) and type these two lines: (pressing Enter after each line)
COPY PKUNZIP.EXE A:
(this may respond with "1 file(s) copied")
PKZIP -a A:CUSTLIST C:\MERGE1.CSV
Where -a is a dash followed by a lower-case A. After this has finished,
it will show you the percentage by which it compressed the customer file
- something like (75%), done (where 75% indicates the amount the file
was compressed).
To return to Windows, type EXIT and press Enter.
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After you copy the mailing list to a diskette per the above
instructions, if you want to double-check the names that got put on
the disk follow these steps:
Go to the COMMAND MENU or a DOS prompt and type these lines,
pressing the Enter key after each line:
MD C:\TEMPJS (it's ok if you get DIRECTORY ALREADY EXISTS)
DEL C:\TEMPJS\MERGE1.CSV (it's ok if you get FILE NOT FOUND)
A:PKUNZIP A:CUSTLIST C:\TEMPJS
EDIT C:\TEMPJS\MERGE1.CSV
Note that when you are in the (usually blue) EDIT screen there is a line
counter at the bottom right corner so you can count how many lines/names
are in your file. You can go to the bottom line by pressing Ctrl-End to
quickly get the line count.