Fields inside footer -- Last record showing field instead of data

[Benjamin Bryan]

Hi, I am doing a letter mail merge with a CSV file, and have six fields
in the footer. (fields 6 and 7 are sometimes blank depending on number
of address lines).

«3»
«6»
«7»
«8»
«9»
«10»


The merge preview correctly shows all the fields. The last record will
look fine. e.g.

123456
Mr. Someonebody Someone
123 Some Street
Some City, Zip
Some Country

Next I do the actual merge as a new document and the last record still
shows up fine like it did in the merge preview.

Now if I print, or do print preview the LAST record will show a «7»
in the name field instead of the data.

123456
«7»
123 Some Street
Some City, Zip
Some Country

It is only «7», the name field that has this problem, and it is only
on the last record. And it always looks fine after doing the merge as
a new document, but when I print, or do a print preview it will
print/show the field «7» instead of the field data.

I am using Windows XP Pro
Mirosoft Office 2003 (11.6568.6568) SP2
....all the latest updates are installed AFAIK

I am using a footer because I don't want the alignment on the bottom
section of our receipts to be messed up (this gets printed on a
form)... some people that have to edit this are prone to messing it up
(text boxes are too easy to move by accident). If there is no solution
to the merge, perhaps an alternative to the footer?

Thanks a lot for any help you can give,
Ben

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

When you say "print" are you actually executing the merge to the printer or
just printing a preview of the results?

If you print the new document created by executing the merge is that OK?

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

Hi, I am doing a letter mail merge with a CSV file, and have six fields
in the footer. (fields 6 and 7 are sometimes blank depending on number
of address lines).

«3»
«6»
«7»
«8»
«9»
«10»


The merge preview correctly shows all the fields. The last record will
look fine. e.g.

123456
Mr. Someonebody Someone
123 Some Street
Some City, Zip
Some Country

Next I do the actual merge as a new document and the last record still
shows up fine like it did in the merge preview.

Now if I print, or do print preview the LAST record will show a «7»
in the name field instead of the data.

123456
«7»
123 Some Street
Some City, Zip
Some Country

It is only «7», the name field that has this problem, and it is only
on the last record. And it always looks fine after doing the merge as
a new document, but when I print, or do a print preview it will
print/show the field «7» instead of the field data.

I am using Windows XP Pro
Mirosoft Office 2003 (11.6568.6568) SP2
....all the latest updates are installed AFAIK

I am using a footer because I don't want the alignment on the bottom
section of our receipts to be messed up (this gets printed on a
form)... some people that have to edit this are prone to messing it up
(text boxes are too easy to move by accident). If there is no solution
to the merge, perhaps an alternative to the footer?

Thanks a lot for any help you can give,
Ben

 

[Graham Mayor]

I can't reproduce this problem either - but as Doug says you should merge to
a new document. Having the fields in the header will be OK for a form letter
merge (though will not suit a catalog/directory merge). The alternative
would be to put the fields in a frame, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Word 2003 will not allow mergefields called 3,6,7,8,9,10 and with a CSV file
containing such field names, they will be changed to M_3, M_6 etc when the
data file is loaded.

I suppose you could use conditional fields to suppress the empty ones eg
{Mergefield M_3}{IF {Mergefield M_6} <> "" "
{Mergefield M_6}"}{IF {Mergefield M_7} <> "" "
{Mergefield M_8}"}{IF {Mergefield M_9} <> "" "
{Mergefield M_9}"}{IF {Mergefield M_10} <> "" "
{Mergefield M_10}"}

would give you

«M_3»
«M_6»
«M_7»
«M_8»
«M_9»
«M_10»

when all the fields have content but
«M_3»
«M_6»
«M_8»
«M_9»
«M_10»

when field M_7 is empty.

 

[Benjamin Bryan]

Thank you both for your help! The issue is solved.

Graham, When I pressed ALT+F9 to view the merge codes I noticed that
where {mergefield 6} should have been there was {ADVANCE \Y 687.60}

I'm not sure what it was so I removed it and lo, {mergefield 6}
reappeared. Now the last record merges correctly (I don't know why
this effected the field below it, {mergefield 7} but that's what it
did).

Mergefields like this «7» work for me... It looks at the 7th column
in the CSV file (earlier I had tried changing those to the header names
like «Addr2» but it did the same thing). So far when a field is
empty Word supresses it automatically.

Doug to answer your question, before fixing the problem, if I merged
directly to the printer as you suggested (by pressing the merge to
printer button) it prints out fine! If I merge to a new document (the
merge to new document button) and then print, it would show up okay in
the new document on the screen, but when I printed the new document the
mergefield «7» would appear on the last record instead of the data.
....Then if I did a print preview the last record would change to
mergefield «7» ...and *after* exiting print preview the new document
would also show «7».

One again thanks for all the help!
Ben