Creating templates using TX Template Designer

The shipped application TX Template Designer is designed to create templates which are compatible to the DocumentServer.MailMerge component. It allows users to connect to databases and to insert valid merge fields and repeating blocks into a document. These documents can be exported to all supported file formats.

The TX Template Designer is an application based on TX Text Control .NET that helps users create fully featured templates that work properly with the DocumentServer.MailMerge class. It uses the standard MS Word MergeFields that are represented by the ApplicationField class of TX Text Control .NET. This description shows how to create a basic template that is used in the following tutorial.

1. Open the TX Template Designer. The original location is at:

\TX Template Designer\TXTemplateDesigner.exe

An empty document will be opened automatically. A database connection is not necessarily required to create a template document.

2. Insert a MergeField into the document by choosing Merge Field from the Insert main menu. Additionally, some sample text could be added to the test document.

3. Click on the inserted field to open the Mini Editor dialog. This dialog can be used to rapidly step through all fields to change the names or to open the properties dialog.

Type in the name of the field: "name".

4. Select Format in the Mini Editor dialog or press F2 to open the appropriate properties dialog. This dialog can be used to change the format of the field. Additionally, some advanced options can be adjusted. Select the settings as shown in the screenshot below:

5. Repeat step 2 and 3 to insert another field and name this field "company". Additionally, you could change the text of both fields. The finished template should now look like this: