Summary

Mail merge project teaches automation by creating personalized letters from a template and name list
Project requires working with nested folders, file paths, and programmatic file handling
Students learn to replace placeholders in template with actual names from invited_names.txt
Practice includes file organization, Python interpreter setup, and following specific output formatting
Emphasis on professional development skills: reading documentation, problem-solving, and implementing new concepts

Resources

Notes\ Code

Here are the instructions for today’s final project:

Create a letter using starting_letter.txt for each name in invited_names.txt. Replace the [name] placeholder with the actual name. Save the letters in the folder "ReadyToSend".

#Hint1: This method will help you: https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_file_readlines.asp #Hint2: This method will also help you: https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_string_replace.asp #Hint3: This method will help you: https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_string_strip.asp

So we need take the names from a file, append them to a list, and replace a placeholder in a letter we also import from a text file with each name in the list. Lets do it.

main.py

names_list = []

with open("./Input/Names/invited_names.txt") as names_file:
    names = names_file.readlines()
    for item in names:
        str(f"{item}")
        names_list.append(item)

for i in range(len(names_list)):
    names_list[i] = names_list[i].strip()

with open("./Input/Letters/starting_letter.txt") as letter_file:
    letter_from_file = letter_file.readlines()

letter_holder = str(letter_from_file)

for x in range(len(names_list)):
    letter = letter_holder.replace("[name]", names_list[x])
    with open(f"./Output/ReadyToSend/LetterTo{names_list[x]}.txt", mode="w") as txtfile:
        txtfile.write(letter)