Format of Mailmerge Field Changes

[memead]

After creating a mailmerge .dot file in Word 2003, the merge field prints
<clientname1> in lieu of Bob Smith. After right-clicking on the merge field,
clicking OK, and saving, the problem is fixed. This did not happen in Word
97. If the .dot files (before and after the change) are opened in Notepad,
the following can be seen:

(Before edit, OK, and save) MERGEFIELD "clientname1" <clientname1>

(After edit, OK, and save) MERGEFIELD clientname1 <clientname1>

For some reason Word 2003 places quotation marks around the merged field.
Saving after edit removes these quotation marks. After the quotation marks
are removed, the mail merge is successful. Why does this happen?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I suspect the business about quotes and no-quotes is a red herring - Word
2003 happens to insert double-quote marks by default when you insert a merge
field (presumably just in case the field name contains spaces) and, as you
say - more or less - removes them if you use left-click|Edit field|OK. But
both normally work fine. I just tried again here to be sure. Can you always
reproduce the problem? Can you simply selecting the mergefields and
executing them with F9 rather than the full "edit field" ?

 

[memead]

We can reproduce this problem. Whenever Word 2003 is used to add a
mergefield then the error occurs. It started when we changed over from
Office 97 to Office 2003 in April. Selecting the mergefields and pressing F9
did not do anything.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

OK, if I
a. create a new document
b. attach a data source
c. insert a merge field
d. save as a .dot
e. open the .dot
f. merge to an output file
g. close the .dot without saving
h. create a new .doc based on the .dot
i. merge to an output file

I don't see this at any point. Which is just to point out that it does not
seem to be an inherent problem that affects all Word 2003 installations. But
j. are you seeing this on multiple machines, or just one?
k. if you do that (i.e. rather than whatever you might usually do), do you
see the problem, no matter how simple your mail merge main document and data
source?
l. are you actually opening the .dot, or creatign new .docs based on it?
m. if you create a .doc rather than a .dot in the first place, do you see
the problem?
n. If so, it may be worth trying to save the .doc as a .rtf (or a .htm
format), before you modify the field. Close and re-open the .rtf file (or
..htm) to see if the problem still occurs. If it does, make the change you
tried before, text and then resave as .rtf (or .htm). Open the two files as
plain text files and compare them. Although both file types have a lot of
apparently irrelevant stuff in them, look for differences other than those
quotes (differences which may not have appeared if you were opening a .dot
directly in Notepad).

If there is no such difference, then I do not know what is happening but I
suppose it is possible that the problem is related to an upgrade direct from
Word 97. Perhaps try a Word Help|Detect and repair?