MergeFields are very powerful elements and provide many different options such as additional text that should be added in front or after the field text and a pre-defined format such as UPPERCASE or Title Case.

But the most powerful feature is the string formatter for numeric numbers and date values.

A typical sample for a numeric format is a currency. The merge field value comes from a data source and contains a simple Integer and Float value such as the number 24. But the field should render the value with a currency symbol and 2 decimal digits: $24.00.

In this case, the numeric format of the field can be used to render the required format:

Text Control's reporting engine MailMerge supports all standard numeric formats, custom numeric formats and standard and custom date and time formats.

The above sample shows a custom numeric string format. In order to add a currency symbol and 2 decimal digits, the following formats can be used:

$##,###.00

C2

Results:

2400 -> $2,400.00

The first is a custom format with various format specifiers such as zero placeholdes, digit placeholders and decimal points.

The second is a standard numeric format for currencies with 2 decimal digits. The following table lists the standard numeric formats with examples (from MSDN):

The next table lists the custom numeric format specifiers and shows samples produced by each format specifier:

In order to keep clean data in database tables, the formatting of numeric strings should be part of the template. The string formatter provides a powerful way to format numeric strings or date values.