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Document Generation Overview

Introduction

Qbyte Optix makes it easy to access the data attributes required to prepare common industry letters and documents that are necessary to be generated for various situations. Prebuilt data extract document generation templates are available, or you can create your own data extract.

Step 1:  In Qbyte Optix, Create the Excel Spreadsheet

• Use one of the available data extract templates above or create your own data extract to select the required data attributes.

• Click on Export to Excel, and choose xlsx format.

• Save the Excel spreadsheet to your designated drive\folder.

The most important step in the mail merge process is to completely set up and prepare your data. You will use your spreadsheet as the data source. Here are some tips to prepare your data for the mail merge:

• All data that is to be merged is in the first sheet of your spreadsheet.

• Make sure the column headings in your spreadsheet are in row 1 and they are not any blank rows between the header row and the row where the actual data starts.

• Make sure the column headings in your spreadsheet is descriptive of the data as this will be important in one of the mail merges steps.

• All data entries with dates and percentages are in the spreadsheet so that Word can properly read their values.

• Changes or additions to your spreadsheet needs to be completed prior to connecting it to your mail merge document in Word. For example, if you have multiple rows with the same lessor/company and you want to merge them into 1 row this must be completed prior to connecting to your Word document.

Step 2:  Create Mail Merge 

Connect Word to Excel to do a Mail Merge  

When creating a mail merge, you will probably use an existing document/letter template. This step will connect your document/letter to the Excel spreadsheet that contains the data to be merged.

• Open your existing Word document/letter and go to the Mailings tab. As you work through the Mail Merge process, you will be working through the options on the tab from left to right.

• Select the Start Mail Merge drop-down to see a list of the different types of documents available and choose the type of merge you want to run. Typically, users choose Letters.

• Select the Select Recipients drop-down and choose Use an Existing List.

• Find the Excel spreadsheet that you saved from Qbyte Optix and Open.

• The Select Table window will pop up. Click Reports Results and OK.

Insert the Merge Fields

Next, you will need to indicate where you want the specific data from the Excel spreadsheet to be merged into your Word document/letter. 

• Highlight the word(s) in your document that you want to replace with the actual data from the Excel spreadsheet.

• Click the Insert Merge Field drop-down to see the list of available column headers on your Excel spreadsheet. As soon as you select the header that represents the highlighted word(s), the highlighted word(s) will change to <<column header>>.

• Repeat these steps for each field that you want to merge.

Preview the Mail Merge

Now you can preview your Mail Merge to see what your document/letter will look like with the actual data from the Excel spreadsheet to ensure it is set up in the way you want.

• Choose Preview Results and the merge fields will be replaced with the data from the first row of the excel spreadsheet. Use the arrows beside Preview Results to jump to next/previous/first/last.

• Click Preview Results again to deselect/exit out of Preview mode.

• Make any necessary changes to the document/letter or the Excel data, be sure to Save and preview again.

Complete the Mail Merge

Once satisfied with the preview results, the next step is to generate the final Word document with all the individual documents/letters.

• Select the Finish & Merge drop-down to see a list of options and choose Edit Individual Documents. 

• The Merge to New Document window will pop-up. Select the default option All and OK.

• A new Word document will be created with a separate document/letter for each of the rows on the excel document.

• Print this new Word document as required

Saving the Word Document for Future Use

You now have two word documents open and will need to save one or both if you wish to reuse again in the future. 

• The original document/letter that you started out with can be saved as you would any other Word document and used again next time you need to generate this document. 

• If you plan to reuse the newly created mail merge document in the future, Save it and it will stay connected to your data source.