Hi, Graham Mayor ...
Thank you for your information. This particular merge letter has about 16
other fields that pull information from the master client list, i.e., client
name, address, case #, court #, court date, attorney, county, etc., and those
merge fields are working fine. I think that both you and Tiago Nogueira are
of the same mind that it's better to use [FILLIN, prompt, and both the \d and
\o switches]. The merge (after using the syntax given to me by Tiago) does
stop at the point in the letter where the info needs to be "filled in". The
his/her and Mr./Ms. parts are easy to remember, but the text options for Item
2 are a little longer in wordage and harder to remember by heart.
I guess we could set up Item 2 with the syntax { FILLIN "Enter breath test
choice" \d submission to the breath test which alledgedly disclosd a blood
alcohol level in excess of .80% \o } and then when the merge stops at that
point in the letter, we could type in "refusal of the breath test" if that
what what our client choose.
This way we'd have the longer text option in the merge field by default, but
can choose to type in the second text option if it fits.
We're in the process of switching from WordPerfect for Unix to Microsoft
Office, so one of our other merge letters that doesn't use as many fields as
this other letter did may work better as a protected form letter with the
drop down list box so that we could choose from a list.
Thank you both for your time and effort in helping me bring our letters into
the 21st century.
Good day, and many thanks.
Vicki
Graham Mayor said:
There is no way to pick from a list using the Fillin field, but a fillin
field without the \o switch will stop at each record and present the prompt
to type in the required text when you merge. eg
{ FILLIN "His/Her?" \d "His" }
with the \o switch it prompts only once at the start of the merge.
Reading between the lines, I suspect that you are not in fact mergeing a
batch of records, but preparing individual douments in respect of offenders.
For this task it is likely that you have a lot of standard text with a few
locations to enter data. For that job a protected on-line form would better
fill the bill, and you can have dropdown form fields containing your
variable texts in such a document.
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
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Hi, Tiago Nogueira
I tried your suggestion and while inserting the FILLIN syntax into
the merge letter during the merge process using both the \d and \o
switches, it only allows me to enter what might be the most frequent
response, i.e., his - refusal of the breath test - Mr.
Is there someway that I can use a field that allows me to choose one
response or the other or to use a stop field/code and then choose
from a drop down list? I know that you can create drop down lists in
forms (I even tried to use it in this merge letter, but couldn't see
both choices - only the first item on the list.
I created autotext for each text options listed in 1-3 and used the
autotext field in the merge letter, but again ended up with one or
the other text option, not being able to choose between the two.
Can a macro work here and what could it possibly be? Part of me
thinks this is way harder than it should be. Why they got rid of the
stop field in Word 2002 that allowed the merge to stop so you could
type in what you needed.
Any further thoughts?
Thank you for your time. Vicki
Tiago Nogueira said:
Hi, Vicki...
Let's see what's wrong...
{ FILLIN "Please enter gender pronoun" \d "his" }
Seems that you don't need to use "" when you're typing the switch.
Try like this one: { FILLIN "Please enter gender pronoun" \d his }
and if you want to fillin only when you're going to merge use: {
FILLIN "Please enter gender pronoun" \d his \o }
hope it help.
[]'s
"Vicki" escreveu:
Hello, everyone ...
I am using MS Word 2003. I have a merge letter where I have 3
places where I want to be able to "fillin" certain info. I
inserted the "Fillin" field into the merge letter, but I can't seem
to figure out the correct syntax, i.e. { FILLIN ["Prompt"]
[Switches] }. Here's the three fillin text choices I use for this
letter:
1) his/her
2) refusal of the breath test/submission to the breath test which
allegedly disclosed a blood alcohol level in excess of .08%
3) Mr./Ms.
I tried typing { FILLIN "Please enter gender pronoun" \d "his" },
but it doesn't work. In MS Office 2002, you could actually get the
merge to stop, type in the text you needed, and then proceed, but
it apparently has changed for MS Word 2003?
I need to be able to choose between the two options listed in 1-3.
Any ideas? I'm new to the more advanced fields in merge letters.
Have a nice day.
