Blank lines in mail merge

[Fingers]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

From a very early version of Word vX I set up a set of text boxes to match where my labels were on an A4 sheet as they were not an Avery standard offered in Word's list. I inserted placeholder fields in the top left label and then when I wanted to print, selected Preview and then cut from the top left label and pasted into position on the next label on my part used sheet.

The merge file is from Filemaker but probably not relevant.

If an address had fewer lines than my maximum, Word closed up the blank lines. Now I've upgraded to 2008 this happens correctly on the top left label using Preview but cut and paste inserts the blank lines again.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Sometime yesterday, your original message appeared here. So I can now
see wht you are talking about.

This is certainly not a complete explanation, but I think this is what
is happening:
a. In Word 2008, when you mouse over a text box you see one of those
four-way arrow cursors (a cross with arrows point left,right, up, down).
When you click, the entire text box is selected. To do this in vX, you
would click on the border of the text box.
b. In vX, the behaviour was different - when you mouse over, you see
the normal I-bar cursor and when you click inside the box, a normal text
selection (possibly a point selection) is made. In Word 2008, the second
click you are making when you click at the end of the text is making an
ordinary text selection as in Word vX
c. when you select the text box, in either version, and copy/paste, I
think you must first be clicking in the destination text box first
(obviously, because you want to put the text in the correct place to
print the label). However, in this case, Word pastes a picture of the
text, not the text. What's more, it clearly pastes a picture of the text
that does not take account of the "suppress blank lines" functionality
you get by default in Mail Merge. Here, if instead I simply paste,
instead of trying to insert the text into a particular box, I get a copy
of the original text box complete with the merge fields etc., that
behaves in the same way as the original text box. But you would have to
position that box.
d. If instead you have selected the /text/, rather than the box, both
the fields and their results are pasted into the text box and behave in
the same way as the original.

FWIW if you need to produce other non-standard label layouts in future,
it may be easier to use the "New label" button in "Label options" to
define a custom layout, in whcih case you should be able to use the
normal "propagate label functionaility that Word provides for label merges.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[John McGhie]

Have you turned on your Show/Hide button so you can see the paragraph marks?

Most Word styles insert some space after a paragraph.

That might look like a blank line if you do not enable the non-printing
characters so you can see what you are doing.

Last night, a friend of mine rang in a panic: he lost two CHAPTERS because
he had turned off non-printing characters

Cheers

Sort of solved it myself!

Having used Preview, if I click in the top left label, the whole address is
"selected". If I cut and paste this the blank lines are inserted. If however I
click a second time to clear the selection and leave the cursor at the end of
the last line and then drag to select all the text, this will cut & paste
without inserting the blanks.

Of course, if anyone can explain why, that would be great!

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John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]