capitalization of the first letter in a mail merge field + excepti

[karel]

First of all: a happy New Year to anyone reading this!

Word & Excel (2000) mailmerge
My first Q ever in a newsgroup! is: How to get the first letter capatilized
in a "multiple words" mergefield, allowing for exceptions?
Backround : in Dutch you have sort of difficult surname protocols when
writing official letters, subject to the rather complicated "format" of the
surname, cause the actual surname often consist of multiple names : eg. full
name is: Mr. Jan (first name) van Dal (surname consists of 2 names; van =
"precursing" surname and "Wal'= "actual" surname) - then the adres by letter
would be eg. Dear Mr. Van Dal (notice the capitalization! of van to Van);
similarly de Wal -> De Wal, van der Wal-> Van der Wal, het Paard-> Het Paard,
uit de Grond-> Uit de Grond, op der Heide-> Op der Heide, etc, etc, ;
however!: 't Hoofd ('t = short for het) remains unchanged as well as d'Hond
(d'= short for de).
Still following me?, Ok.
I have an Excel database of these surnames consisting of 2 labels: one
harbours the precursing surname in undercapitals (van.., de...,van der, op
der, 't, d', etc ,and the other of the second part (Wal, Paard, Grond, Heide,
Hoofd, Hond, etc. [remain unchanged]
The big Q is, how, if at all, do I "instruct" the mergefield to get what I
want? that is capitalize the first letter only! of the precursing surname,
but do not capitalize if an apostrophe (') before or after the first letter
is occuring?
Do appreciate any hints to solve this challenge!
Many thanks in adavance!

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I don't know how many records you are dealing with, but I think that it is
something that is probably so complicated to try and do automatically that
it would be simpler just to add a field into your datasource that contains
the desired capitalization.

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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP