Fragments are document templates which can be inserted into other templates or directly into existing documents in ContactsLaw. They make it possible to reuse content and reduce the number and complexity of templates overall.

You create a fragment template via the New Fragment command on the Document management tab. Creating fragments is almost identical to ordinary templates, only with fewer details to complete.

 

Fragments must be in a format which is compatible with the document they are inserted into (see below). ContactsLaw will only insert the body of the fragment document into the main document; for e-mails this means that the From, To, CC, BCC and Subject fields are ignored (however attachments will be copied into the main document). Style information and other metadata may not be copied.

​	​Word fragment	Excel fragment	​Outlook fragment	​HTML email fragment
​Word document*	​✔	​✔	​	​
​Excel document†	​	​	​	​
​Outlook document	​✔	​	​✔	​
​HTML email document	​	​	​	​✔

  

* Fragments are inserted into Word documents as OLE objects (Object Linking and Embedding).

† Excel can be used as a format for fragment templates but fragments cannot be inserted into Excel documents.

In the same way that placeholder fields are added to templates to be replaced with data from ContactsLaw, fragment placeholders can be added to be replaced with the actual fragment. After adding placeholders, you will need to specify the fragment template that will be used for each one.

 

During document creation, ContactsLaw builds fragments using the same file, contacts and dates as the main document, therefore fragments should be:

You can use the ContactsLaw add-ins for Microsoft Outlook or Word to build and insert fragments into existing documents. When added this way, ContactsLaw may not have access to all of the metadata of the original document and therefore some fragments might not build correctly.