[Editor 2.0] Variables

Availability: Essentials, Business, Enterprise

A variable is a merge field designed to save you time by auto-filling any information that frequently occurs in your documents. It's a piece of text surrounded by square brackets, like this:

The variable will not have the yellow background when a recipient is viewing the document, it only appears this way in the editor so you can easily distinguish between text and a variable.

Important Information about Variables:

• You can add variables in both templates and documents
• Variables will work in three pricing table fields: Name, Description, Plain text column
• Variables will only work in the document body. They will not work in the document name, saved messages, or email subject/body.

How to add Variables to your template/document

1. Select a text block where you'd like to place your variable;
2. Type a square opening bracket and either choose the name of a system variable from the dropdown or type your own and press Enter OR

1. Click “Variables” on the right, click the plus sign and enter a variable name, press Enter;
2. The variable will show up in the Variables section;
3. Click the copy icon to copy the variable name, paste it where you need it in your template;

1. To fill out a variable with actual info, click on a variable in a template or open the variables list under “Variables” on the right, enter a value;
2. The information is populated throughout the template/document through the variable used.

To delete a variable, first, delete it on the document body. Next, click on Variables on the right panel, click on the Not used dropdown and find the variable in the list. Hover over it and click the bin icon to delete the variable from your variable list. 

Types of Variables

There are 3 types of variables:

• Role Variables
• System Variables
• Custom Variables

Role Variables

These Variables automatically populate information about your recipient when they're assigned to a Role. They can populate your recipient's first and last name, email address, phone number and company, as long as the information exists in PandaDoc Contacts. (If your recipient doesn’t exist in your PandaDoc Contacts, you can add them when you create the document.)

1. Create a Template Role (you'd have to be in a template to do that);
2. PandaDoc will automatically generate the default role variables: first name, last name, email, company, phone, title and address;
3. Click "Variables" in the top right, find the default role variables by the Role name at the beginning, e.g. Client.FirstName;

1. Copy a variable and paste it where you need it in the template;
2. When you create a document out of this template, you will assign recipients to Roles and click “Start Editing”;
3. Role variables will have been populated upon document creation.

System Variables

These Variables have been predefined by PandaDoc. They will automatically populate information about your document, specific to that individual document and its content (such as Doc’s created date, reference number, pricing table totals, etc.).

Custom Variables

These Variables act as place holders for any information you need to populate manually when creating a document. You can name them whatever you want, and they’re useful if the information doesn’t exist in your Contacts.

See how variables work on a document