Airtable-Zapier-Google Doc (mail merge)

[Hairtable]

There’s an option to create a Zap from a New Record in View Trigger to Create a (Google) Document from a Template.

As Zapier says: “Creates a new doc based on an existing one and can replace any placeholder variables found in your template doc, like {{name}}, {{email}}, etc.” at the Select Google Docs Action stage.

I’ve added a placeholder in the template to match an Airtable field name that I use - {{email}} - testing the Zap only creates a new document based on the template, but preserves the placeholder, and does not replace with the content of the field.

Any ideas how to get this working please?

[Arthur_Godiva]

I want to know too!!

[Chau_Nguyen]

You have to explicitly tell zapier what airtable field you want to populate into the template field. Most likely using a previous step “Find Record” or “New Record” from airtable. It will not automatically match the template fields to airtable fields of the same name.

In my experience, the create document from template function will leave the placeholder in the document if it no data value is retrieved from airtable. It would be preferred if it removed the placeholder and just left a blank if no data is retrieved.

[Hairtable]

Not sure how to get that working. I’ve tried but …
If you go have time to detail a walk-through in Zapier, it would be great to learn how to implement this.

[Lisa_H]

I don’t have Zap… is there any other way to do Mail Merge with Doc Templates?

I currently use Word Documents stored on my computer, and have my contacts list on my Outlook. When I need to send someone a document, I use mail merge to grab their specific file information and plug it into my document, then save it under their name.

I am trying to create a base in which I can automate some of this for me. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!!!