Mail Merge from python data

[Tim Harig]

This page didn't make it to through to my nntp server so I appologize if I
miss something that was covered.

On 2010-11-03, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 20:32:13 +1000, Dylan Evans <dylan at contentfree.info>
> declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general:
>
>> I'm setting up a database for an organisation who want to do mail merges in
>> office 2010. I know i can use the MySQL ODBC driver for the mail merge but i
>> have set up the database with lots of relations and many-to-many links which
>> i'm sure will lead to a huge amount of confusion (I think, i don't really
>> know much about mail merge).

Many to many relationships without some kind of intersection table are
considered a rather poor practice in general.

>> What i want to know is, is there anyway to send data from python, which the
>> UI is written in, to office templates and mail merges?
>
> 	If a long lived form, I'd probably define a query or view (I think
> MySQL 5.x has output-only views) that isolates just to the data fields
> used in the mail merge.

I agree that a view would be the best solution if you have the access to do
so; but, a couple of other alternatives come to mind in case you do not.

1. Do the mail merge in Python using a Word template.  Then you can add any
	kind of logic that you need to the merge.

2. Add some kind of export function to your python UI that allows you to
	export the data to an Excel sheet, CSV, or even another ODBC data
	source (like another MySQL table or database that you might have
	access to).