FlexMail bases its postal presort on the settings you specify in the Presort Wizard that will guide you through the process of presorting your mailing. You can use this Wizard for new presort jobs or you can use it to modify any previously defined presort.
The settings specified influence the postal presorting process in a number of ways:
Based on the sorting settings specified, the addresses will be sorted and grouped in a certain way, conforming to the Royal Mail specifications.
According to the information entered and the settings made, the format of the output will be determined and the correct reports will be generated. This includes the layout of the labels and the contents of the Line Listing and Project Summary.
Based on the definition of the item size, weight, product and product options, the costs of the mailing will be calculated and displayed in the project summary.
It is therefore important that you make sure to specify the correct settings before you run the actual postal sortation process.
NOTE: This help file only gives general descriptions of the settings, procedures and requirements for using the Royal Mail bulk mail products. For the latest detailed official descriptions, please consult the Royal Mail Users Guide at www.royalmailtechnical.com.
To presort your mailing list, do the following:
Make the Datasheet the active view of your project.
Make sure Great Britain (GBR) is selected as locale for your mailing list.
The active locale is displayed in the FlexMail status bar at the bottom of the window. To select Great Britain, double-click the icon showing a globe or flag at the right-hand side of the status bar.
TIP: If the locale that FlexMail has selected is not the one you usually want to use, you can set the default locale in the FlexMail options window. To do so, click the File tab and then Options from the menu that appears and again Options on the right hand side. In the window, select Datasheet and select the default country.
Click Run Presort in the Postal Presort group on the Postal tab.
The Presort Wizard starts.
The Presort Wizard provides step-by step online instructions for defining the settings of a presort job, and ensures that you enter your information correctly. Follow the online instructions to define the settings you want for your mailing. The Presort Wizard will take you through the following steps:
If you are not sure what choices to make, you can get more information by clicking the ? on the title bar of the window or by pressing F1.
When you have completed all steps of the Wizard as described above and click Sort on the Presort fields page of the wizard, FlexMail begins processing your mailing list. Also, when you press Close at any page of the Wizard and have made any changes to the settings, FlexMail will ask you if you want to (re-)sort the mailing list to apply the changes you have made.
During the processing of your list, FlexMail displays the Presort progess page, which informs you about the progress being made. As long as the progress window is on the screen, FlexMail is working on one of the steps.
At the end of the presorting process, the progress window is replaced by the Presort results page, showing you a summary of the results. When you click Finish the Presort Wizard closes.
The changes that are made in FlexMail after presorting a mailing are:
The ordering of records in the Datasheet, as well as the order in which the addresses are displayed in the Designer, will be changed. They are now displayed in the postal order.
On the Datasheet, some additional fields will be added to each address, showing the presort data for that particular address.
After you run a postal presort, one or more additional views will be generated, displaying the output that has been generated. To activate the window displaying the generated outout, select Presort Documents in the Postal Presort group on the Postal tab.
After you have run a postal presort, you can no longer modify the selection and sort order of your data in the Datasheet, since this will corrupt the sortation. Also, any function that changes the data will be disabled. To activate these functions again, remove the sortation with the Remove Presort command in the Postal Presort group on the Postal tab.