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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.

Alternatively, click Variables on the right, click the plus sign and enter a variable name, next press Enter. The variable will show up in the Variables section.

Next, click the Copy icon to copy the variable name, paste it where you need it in your template/document.

To fill out a variable with actual info, click on a variable in a template/document or open the variables list under Variables on the right, and enter a value. 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.

You won't be able to use variables in titles when working with forms, document bundles, or bulk send.

We suggest adding variables to template titles so that they are auto-filled each time you create a document from the template.

Adding variables in a template title is easy:

Please note that adding custom variables when creating a document from a template will not work. Variables will be passed to the document title as a simple text value instead of a variable.

By default, when you create a document, the template title is replaced with the name of the Deal or Opportunity. However, if you include CRM variables in the template's title that you use for creating documents from your deals/opportunities, the document's name will be based on the template name, and the variables in the titles will be auto-filled with the corresponding field values.

There are 4 types of variables:

Role variables can be set up on the template level only.

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.

Next, click on Use this template and create a document out of this template, assign recipients to Roles, and click Continue. Role variables will have been populated upon document creation.

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 document created date, document sent date, reference number, document value, etc.).

[Document.ExpirationDate] and [Document.SentDate] variables are filled once you send your document. Variables' date format depends on the defualt date format and recipient view localisation settings set up in you workspace settings.

Pricing table variables help you easily reuse data from the pricing table footer in your template, document, or form. Each row you add to the footer of your pricing table will appear as a variable, as long as it has a value.

To access the list of variables, first click on a pricing table in your template, document, or form. Then, click Properties on the floating panel and select Variables on the right. Finally, click the copy icon next to the variable name and paste the variable into your document’s content.

You can also find pricing table variables in the Variables tab on the right.

If you rename a pricing table, variables will automatically reflect this change.

These variables act as placeholders 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.

To add a custom variable open the square opening bracket, type the name of your variable, and click Enter.

To edit the name of a custom variable:

Want to learn more about working with fields? Come check out our Creating & Using Variables course on the PandaDoc Learning Academy!