blank field to print nothing

[mike grizaard]

I am using a Word 2002 mail merge in conjunction with an
Excel 2000 table of data and I find that when a field is
intentionally left empty the merge prints a zero in the
merged document. Is there a method of obtaining a blank
instead of a zero ? or of getting the software to ignore
blank fields ?

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Mike,

I am using a Word 2002 mail merge in conjunction with an
Excel 2000 table of data and I find that when a field is
intentionally left empty the merge prints a zero in the
merged document. Is there a method of obtaining a blank
instead of a zero ? or of getting the software to ignore
blank fields ?

You may want to read up on the Word 2002 mail merge
peculiarities in the Mail Merge FAQ on my website, but very
briefly
- use a DDE connection to the data OR
- select the column and use the Data/Text to Columns
command to specifically format this column as "pure text"
(assuming it does contain text values) OR
- use a numerical formatting switch in the Mergefield to
specify the "zero value" display OR
- use an IF field to suppress the zero display

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jan 24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail