function readOnly(count){ }
Sign Up ›
Starting November 20, the site will be set to read-only. On December 4, 2023,
forum discussions will move to the Trailblazer Community.
Learn More

Browse by Topic
ShowAll Questionssorted byDate Posted
+ Start a Discussion
alexannicalexannic 

Mail Merge Problem - Confusing error messages

Hello,

I have developed  some Word mail merge templates for my company (Enterprise edition) that print an opportunity with a specific layout (something like an order acknowledgement). We have been using the template for two weeks now with no problems, and all of a sudden from the beginning of this week we are getting different error messages.

More specifically, I get messages like: "Merge data error: End tag 'esforce.com' does not match start tag 'data'", or other versions of this message (instead of esforce.com, I get parts of the Opportunity information), or “A string literal was expected, but no opening quote character was found.”

My guess is that information during a mail merge is passed on using URL encoding, and when special characters are involved (ex. Product description) the URL parameters break. However, I've not been able to pinpoint the problematic characters.

Has anyone faced the same problem? Or has anything in the mail merge process changed during the last week? (Opportunity field names?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Alex

foghornfoghorn

The old mail merge http layer has had some problems with the new network production stack since the winter release. 

 

We did a maintenance release this past weekend that made the problem a whole lot worse L, the cases have been poring in since Monday morning.

 

There is an updated version of the code available on production right now that is not affected.  You can access it by going to the select template screen and typing

ctrl-shift-n

 

You should see a message at the bottom saying you are using the new code.

 

Then just click merge like you normally would (be sure to install the new component if you don't trust salesforce by default)

 
alexannicalexannic

Thanks for the prompt reply. The problem seems to be fixed when using this combination.
However, I'd like to suggest the following:

  1. When deploying such changes it would be wise to try them first on a small user scale, not on the whole platform.
  2. We as clients of salesforce have a right to know if any changes are being made to the software that we're using - paying for. In this way, if I had known that the mail merge function had been updated, we would have been more suspicious of the documents produced.

In our case, we had used the mail merge function to produce Offer documents sent to our clients, and Manufacturing Orders sent to our production plant. In some cases, the mail merge function did work, and produced erroneous information (ex. wrong prices, or mixed up product quantities!).

We now have two clients who have accepted our (wrong) offers, and are rightfully refusing to pay the difference. And we have dissatisfied clients who have received wrong quantities of the products asked.

 One might argue why don’t we check every order before we send it. But if we had to check every product price/quantity/discount/total/offer etc. manually, we wouldn’t need salesforce would we?

 Please excuse my critical tone, but I am sure that you can understand the problems created with this update. What I’m hoping to achieve here is not to insult you in any way but to make some constructive suggestions that may be helpful to all of us.
Thank you.

 With Kind Regards,
Alexandros Nikolaidis
Chief Sales Executive
sbasba

Could you please let me know, which select template screen you are referring to?

 

Thanks.

 

 
alexannicalexannic
That is the very first page ou get when you click on any mail merge button.
java devjava dev

Hi

Can we get the code using by SF for mail merge & generating DOC file?

Because iam not able to replace the quote line fields in my mail merge .I dont know what template fields to use for quote line items getting replaced.

Thank you.