The screenshot to the right shows the spreadsheet format that most people will use for a straight mailmerge operation into form letters, labels or envelopes.
The street_no sequence has been sorted into alternate (1,3,5 - 2,4,6 etc.) numbers. This is for door-to-door delivery.
There is an algorithm in our database system that automatically inserts the word "Flat" or "flat" in the correct place where appropriate - see flat_id in the screenshot above and flat_id2 in the one below.
The screenshot to the right shows a lot of fields that are used for our database organisation.
I shall not explain all of them here. But, if your existing mail merge systems do not want the word "Flat" or "flat" automatically inserted then you can use the flat_id column instead of the flat_id2 format.
The sort keys (snn, snen and sna) enable sorting in logical or alternate sequence (see above).
There are two reasons for having separate sort keys:-
- The street_no cannot be relied on to be numeric (eg 26a or 20-24), so to sort on it does not put it in a logical order
- By using the sequence indicator (sind) on our database administration system, individual streets can be marked for sequential or alternate street_no