Fields embedded within fields

Question

I have a table 'Letstd1' with two columns 'Letno' and 'Letmem' letno is the letter number and letmem is a 4000 VARCHAR2 field containing the body of a letter.
From a form I call a report which must select a letter based on the parameter 'letno' and address it to a authority holder based on the parameter 'authority'.
The body of the letter is a field in my report which is 'letmem' and this works just fine, but if the body of the letter has fields that need to pull in data doing the following does not work &<reference> where reference is a parameter specified in the calling form.
Can anyone help me with this? This is the second thread I have created for this problem so I apologise if you have had to read this twice. Nobody has come up with an answer yet.
Thank you
Michael

Answer 1

basic letter :
Dear All, you'll get a present for free : ##PRESENT## .
Regards,
Joe
write a plsql package replacing ##PRESENT## by some real present, depending on salary.
TEXT_TEMP := replace (TEXT_STANDARD,'##PRESENT##', fnc_text_of_salary(p_salary)) ;
insert into table LETTERS_TEMP values (ID_PERSON, TEXT_TEMP, .....) ;
only now call your report and let it read from LETTERS_TEMP,
in other words, let report just do the formatting, and some plsql program do the individualisation of letters, works like a charm.