1.7

Personalizing Content
Variable-data printing is a form of digital printing in which elements such as text and graphics
may be changed using information from a database or data file. It prints unique documents with
customized messages for each customer. This is exactly what you can do with Connect: using
variable data you can personalize your company's communications.
Before you can start personalizing the content of a template, you must open a data file or
database; see: "Loading data" on page221.
The most common ways to personalize templates are listed below.
Variable data
Variable data are data from a database or data file that are used to personalize documents for
each customer. Variable data fields can be inserted in the text directly. For example, if a
person's last name can be found in your data, the field that holds the last name can be used in
the text of a letter or email. Scripts in PrintShop Mail Connect Designer are the basis of
Variable Data Printing.
The easiest, quickest and most direct way to add customer data to content is via drag and drop;
see "Variable Data" on page228.
The drag-and-drop method results in a Text Script. Another way to create a Text Script is to use
the Text Script Wizard. Often it is better to use the Text Script Wizard than the drag-and-drop
method.
The Text Script Wizard gives you more control over the way data is displayed. It can insert one
or more data fields, each with an optional prefix and suffix. For blocks of data, such as
addresses, the Text Script Wizard definitely is the better choice. See "Using the Text Script
Wizard" on page230.
Conditional content
In a template you may want to reveal content - text or images - to one group of recipients, but
hide it from others. You can use a Conditional Script Wizard to achieve this, if you have a data
field in your data on the basis of which a condition can be set. See "Showing content
conditionally" on page236.
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