Why a Merge Field Prints Blank, and How Header and Footer Templates Are Applied

This article covers two things in the letter and email editor: the merge fields you insert with Show Fields List (the ones that fill in a buyer name, a stock number, a payoff amount when the document is built), and the Header Template and Footer Template dropdowns that sit next to them. It explains why a merge field can come out as an empty space, and why only one footer can be set to apply itself automatically.

Questions this answers

• "The email I sent a customer shows blank where their name should be - what went wrong?"
• "We set up two different email footers and marked both to auto-apply by default - now only one shows up on new letters, why?"

This article is only about merge fields and header/footer templates inside the letter and email editor. If the email will not send at all, or the send failed, see the article on outgoing email server settings and failed sends. If a whole template is missing from a list, see the article on templates that do not appear for everyone.

Why a merge field comes out blank

A merge field is a placeholder. When you build the letter or email, DeskManager Online looks up each placeholder on the record you opened the document from and swaps in the value it finds. Deal letters read the deal, inventory letters read the vehicle, customer account letters read the account.

If that record has nothing stored in the field, the placeholder is replaced with nothing at all. You get an empty space. There is no "missing" marker, no warning, and nothing stops the letter from printing or the email from going out. The same thing happens if a field cannot be read for any other reason.

So a blank in the finished document almost always means the source record is blank, not that the template is broken.

Finding out which field it was

1. Open the same template and choose Edit Template. In edit mode the placeholders are visible again, so you can see exactly which one sits where the blank appeared.
2. Use Show Fields List to check the name of the field you are looking at.
3. Open the record the document is built from and look at that field.

The usual culprits:

• A business customer where the company name is filled in but the individual first and last name fields are empty, so a buyer-name placeholder resolves to nothing.
• Co-buyer placeholders on a deal that only has one buyer.
• An email address, phone number or address line that was never entered on the contact.
• A deal figure that has not been calculated yet because the deal is still being worked.

Fixing it

1. Fill in the field on the source record and save it.
2. Go back and generate the letter or email again. The values are looked up fresh each time you build the document.

An email you already sent keeps the values it was built with. It is stored exactly as it went out, and editing the customer record afterwards does not change it. If the customer received a blank, you have to correct the record and send a new message.

Header Template and Footer Template

The letter and email editor has a Header Template dropdown and a Footer Template dropdown, each with a link beside it to the Header Templates and Footer Templates lists. Headers and footers are separate documents from the letter itself; they get stitched onto the top and bottom when the message is built, and any merge fields inside them are resolved the same way described above.

Only one header and one footer can auto-apply

When you edit a header or footer, there are two checkboxes: Is Default Template and Apply this template to all current templates. The list screen shows them as the Default and Apply to All templates columns.

These do not stack. Saving a footer with Apply this template to all current templates ticked automatically clears that same tick from whichever footer had it before. The two settings behave the same way for headers, and independently of each other. So after marking a second footer, exactly one footer still carries the flag, and it is the one you saved most recently. Nothing on screen announces the swap.

If you open the Footer Templates list you can confirm this: only one row will have a check in the Apply to All templates column.

An explicitly chosen header or footer always wins

The auto-apply header or footer is only used as a fallback. It fills in when the letter or email you are composing has no header or footer of its own selected. If a template already has a specific header or footer picked in its dropdowns, that choice is kept and the auto-apply one is ignored.

That is the other reason a footer can seem to "not show up": the template you are composing from already names a different footer.

Header and footer templates belong to one lot

The Header Templates and Footer Templates lists are kept per lot. If you are a multi-store group, a header created while you were working in one store does not appear in another store's list, and the auto-apply setting is tracked separately for each store. You need to create the header or footer again in each lot that should use it.

When to contact support

Contact support if a merge field is blank even though you can see a value on the record it should be reading, or if a header or footer that is set to apply to all templates still never appears on a letter that has no header or footer of its own selected.