Address block problem with BCM2007

[Mick Jennings]

Hi all,

Just got all of my contacts into BCM (around 2,000). I'm in the test phase
of creating a direct mail marketing campaign to selected contacts.

I have my letter set up and can use the Address Block ok. Within the Address
Block editor the addresses preview ok. However, within Mail Merge preview and
within the final letter generated there is a problem with multi-line
addresses whcih get displayed and printed with a square (unprintable
character) between the multiple lines.

I also tried to pull out the individual street lines instead of using the
Address Block, but it looks like there is no such concept within the
database. It looks to me like the multiple lines are stored in the "Business
Street" field separated by line-feed characters but that those characters
aren't being handled properly within Word.

Does anyone know a way of handling this ? If not I'm going to have to go
back to my original Excel source and manage it from there. I wanted to use
BCM to track the leads and opportunities.

 

[whkratz]

Hi Mick -- Here's an article you may want to look at...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/198283 . It doesn't deal directly with your
issue, but it might point you in the direction of a solution, i.e. use Find
and Replace after your mail-merged document has been created. Hope that
helps a little.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[Mick Jennings]

Thanks Bill - I'd already searched the KB and foudn that one, but it applies
to editing a text file containing rows of data.

My problem is that the merge produces a file whereby the addresses are
pulled through as multiple lines on a single line separated by a character I
can't see (square). If I could see what character it was I could replace them.

 

[whkratz]

Hi Mick -- Okay, I'm getting the picture now. So you can't see any character
there even if you set your View to reveal All Formatting Marks?

I can't seem to duplicate, with my own Business Contacts, the behavior you
describe. What method did you use to get your Contact data into BCM?

Regards....Bill Kratz

 

[whkratz]

Mick -- Can you e-mail me a Word doc file with one or two examples of the
offending addresses in it (so just one or two pages from your sample mail
merge)?

Regards.....Bill Kratz (e-mail address removed)

 

[Mick Jennings]

Thanks Bill. I have a document ready, but I can't attach it here and I don't
have your email ?

 

[whkratz]

Mick -- You just missed that I listed my e-mail after my closing signature in
the last post. It's (e-mail address removed). I'll wait for the doc.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[Mick Jennings]

Again, thanks for trying and it’s along the right lines but not right for two
reasons.

1. That KB refers to the problem whereby the AddressBlock mergefield behaves
incorrectly with UK address by putting the City, County and Postal Code on a
single line. That’s not my problem and in fact it’s handling those fields
correctly.
2. The problem is with the “Business Street†field. The KB article
referenced above suggests deleting the AddressBlock and replacing it with
individual fields. I’ve tried that and I can indeed display the Business
Street field, which contains multiple lines. The problem is with the display
of those multiple lines. The addresses preview correctly in the AddressBlock
editor, but when merged into the document they insert an unreadable character
(displayed as a square) instead of a CR.




Bill replied to my email document with ...

Hi Mick – Thanks for the file. Now I see clearly what you mean. I’m
working on it, but I think we might be getting into this territory:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282594/en-us?spid=2530&sid=47 Take a look
and see what you think.

Regards…..Bill Kratz

 

[whkratz]

Hi Mick -- Yes, I understand. I didn't mean that the article applied
precisely to your situation. I simply meant that it described a somewhat
similar symptom, and consequently we should consider the idea that the
AddressBlock function cannot handle your addresses for some reason known only
to a guy in a cubicle at Microsoft ):

Now, one interesting aspect here is that with the sample file you sent me, I
am not seeing the "unreadable" (square) character that you are, though the
lines are still not properly broken. I am seeing a non-breaking space
between the two, concatenated lines. Let's keep looking.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[whkratz]

Mick -- Okay, if I enter your sample data directly into BCM (i.e. I type the
data directly into BCM Business Contact Inspector forms), and then mail merge
using the AddressBlock, everything comes out just the way it should. The
address lines are properly broken.

So it seems that perhaps we should be looking "upstream" of the actual mail
merge.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[Mick Jennings]

Thanks Bill. I'm not too surprised as the AddressBlock preview screen showed
the addresses correctly. I suspect that Word is not handling the character
which has been inserted, but that also implies that it's not a standard
paragraph end marker.

One possibility here is the Word version. I'm using Word 2007, which of
course uses the new docx format. I'll bet anything you're on 2003 or earlier ?

 

[whkratz]

Mick -- Good guess, but I tested this glitch on Word 2007 at my end.

Did you import your Contacts from Excel or some other application?

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[Mick Jennings]

Originally they were in Excel, with columns headed Address1, 2 and 3 as well
as City and Zip. I had problems getting BCM to import those fields into the
single available "Business Street" field.

My solution in the end was to import them into an Outlook contacts folder,
which gives access to the individual fields. Outlook parses them without a
problem and created the addresses ok. I then selected all contacts and moved
them into BCM.

So, originally Excel, then Outlook Contacts, then BCM.

 

[whkratz]

Okay, let me give it a go with that method at this end. I might not be able
to get to it until this evening, but I guess it's getting pretty late for you
anyway. I'll report back my success (failure) asap.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[Mick Jennings]

Much appreciated Bill. Don't knock yourself out, I'm off to bed myself soon.

I'll resort to using the Excel file for now, which means this isn't critical
just a nagging problem.

 

[whkratz]

Much appreciated Bill. Don't knock yourself out, I'm off to bed myself soon.

I'll resort to using the Excel file for now, which means this isn't critical
just a nagging problem.

Well it's the nagging problems that can really get to you, so I decided to
take one more stab at this. The bottom line, I think, is that you are simply
on the wrong side of the pond. Just kidding! However, Regional Options do
seem to be coming into play here, and the likely result is that we need a
workaround to overcome the problems created by your residency. Here's what
I've found so far:

1) With my Regional Options set to the U.S., no matter how I import or
create the Outlook Contacts with multi-line addresses, I can complete the
mail merge with no problems. Everything looks the way we want, and no
formatting problems occur.

2) If I change my Regional Options to the UK, things start to go awry. The
first thing that I noticed is that with U.S. Regional Options, the Mail Merge
Recipients window displays the mult-line data with two of the mystery square
characters separating data, as seen in this screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712107.jpg However, with
Regional Options set for the UK, the same sort of data is shown with only one
of the mystery square characters between the "lines" of data, as in this
screenshot: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712101.jpg

3) If I complete a mail merge with my Regional Options set for the UK, I
get the same problem as you originally reported yesterday. You can see the
results in this screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712102.jpg

4) It turns out that the single square character is acting like a lind feed
char(10), while the two square characters are acting like a carriage return
char(13). (I won't go into how I figured that out; suffice it to say that it
involved a couple glasses of wine.)

5) So it seems likely that what we need is a way to switch the char(10) to
a char(13). This brings us back to something related to the method described
in the Microsoft article we looked at yesterday in the post above. If after
I run the mail merge, I just run a Find and Replace to convert the char(10)
to a char(13), the data is on separate lines as we would like, but there
remains some hidden formatting that affects the line spacing. I can't find
any normal way within Word to correct this issue. You can see the results
here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712103.jpg

6) So what we need, I think, is a three-step process to convert everything
properly. First Find and Replace the char(10) with char(13) as in the
example above. Then run Find and Replace to convert all the char(13) to some
other character that does not appear elsewhere in the document, such as # as
in this screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712105.jpg Finally Find and
Replace the # characters with char(13) again, and the result should be what
we want with everything formatted properly as in this screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712106.jpg

So it seems that a few steps are needed, but at least on my machine this
produces the desired results. Let us know if it works for you. Hope it
helps some.

Regards.....Bill Kratz

 

[whkratz]

This #@%^$*& (i.e. frustrating) board added a few characters to a couple of
the image links in the post above. Just remove and trailing spaces in the
address in your browser, or in the alternative, here are the corrected links:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712107.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/whkratz/712105.jpg

 

[Mick Jennings]

Thanks Bill. I'll need to take my time going through that and will let you
know.

I guess the alternative is I change to US Regional Settings before the merge
then change back after.

 

[whkratz]

I guess the alternative is I change to US Regional Settings before the merge
then change back after.

Unfortunately I don't think that will work. No matter what I did, with my
Regional Options on U.S., I couldn't get the Postal Code to appear by itself
on the last line of the address. Maybe you would have better luck with that.

Regards.....Bill Kratz