Question

Update Word Doc remove fields

Workflow

Updated October 20, 2017

asked on January 31, 2017

So we have been trying to get an update word doc activity to work and are confused as to how it works. Currently we have multiple fields and multiple tables. I have one merge fields modification and then 5 Merge Table activities.

Things seem to fill in and work fine. However sometimes when this is run, a person may not have Dependents nor would it have Income or Assets. However when I try and check these boxes in one table, it seems to break completely different tables. For example, on my Dependent table I have the following checked:

This is what I assume I want as I dont want anything to appear in the table if the Query returns nothing. Now this works and shows nothing under Dependent. However my Income and Assets do not show in the word doc. (totally different tables)

Now if I uncheck those boxes in the Dependent table, things for Income and Assets show up normally but then of course the empty table is back.

How do these checkbox activities in one table have an effect on other tables? It seems like what we are trying to do is simple. Populate a table if the data is there, otherwise leave it empty. But the boxes in different Update Word documents modifications seem to break eachother.

Thanks,

Chris

0 0

Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on February 1, 2017

Hello Chris,

Yeah, the one with it checked would make the ones below blank. Out of curiosity, if the income or assets table is empty, would you also want those to be removed?

If so, then you can just have the most bottom of those modifications have the box ticked. This would remove the tables of the modifications above it only if they are empty.

0 0

Replies

replied on January 31, 2017

Hello Chris,

This seems to be an unintended consequences of the "Remove unused regions" in that it will go through the whole document rather than just the modification being made and I have filed it as a bug. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

As for now, a workaround could be to put that modification with the "Remove unused regions" option at the bottom since it doesn't look like other modifications use the "Remove unused regions" option.

Best Regards,

Winston Kao

0 0

View 2 previous replies

replied on February 1, 2017

Unfortunately, the income, assets, or dependent table could be empty. I would put those three at the end but that probably would not work as then the top one with that box ticked would change the two below correct?

0 0

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on February 1, 2017

Hello Chris,

Yeah, the one with it checked would make the ones below blank. Out of curiosity, if the income or assets table is empty, would you also want those to be removed?

If so, then you can just have the most bottom of those modifications have the box ticked. This would remove the tables of the modifications above it only if they are empty.

0 0

replied on February 1, 2017

Yes, we want Income, Assets, and Dependents to only show if they are indeed there. I will add the remove unused regions only to the last table activity and test it out.

Thanks Winston

0 0

replied on September 27, 2017

Hi Winston-

I have a similar situation but am having terrible luck getting rid of the unused tables (regions) properly. Have there been any recent updates to this functionality?

0 0

replied on October 20, 2017 • Show version history

Update to my follow-up. Trying to do this straight out of Forms just didn't give me the desired behavior. However, I was writing it all to a database, so I changed the source tables to be from data queries, and that got things working.

But now there's another problem. I'd like my table headers to disappear as well if the table is empty. It's basically a section nested within a section, as described in this article.

http://support.gemboxsoftware.com/kb/articles/mail-merge-remove-empty-table

Unfortunately, when I do this, all the sections just get blown out as being empty. Disabling the option to remove empty regions, I see that the internal region--the actual table--no longer populates properly; it just keeps the token names (screenshot below). Assuming I set this up right, it seems like the nested sections causes Workflow to not be able to fill out the internal region. (And to be clear, this table does populate properly without the 'FullSizeSection' fields.)

0 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

Update Word Doc remove fields

Answer

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.