How do you suppress a line in word if merge fld is blank?

[Todd]

Hi,

I have an excel spreadsheet as my datasource. I am pulling in merge fields
into my word document. I have a merge field called Company and sometimes
that field is empty depending on what record I am looking at. If the field
is empty, Word shows a blank line. Is there any way to suppress the blank
line if the Company field has no data in it? I have tried many examples to
no success including using the paragraph marker.

Just an fyi, I'm not using the traditional Word mail merge from the tools
menu. What I have is an excel datasource, twenty Word letters all setup in a
unique layout with merge fields embedded in them and I also have a main mail
merge word document that uses if conditions based on a letter code (in the
datasource) to determine which particular letter to show. In the main merge
doc I can then left or right arrow to see the next record with the
appropriate letter shown.

Microsoft support has told me since I am using embedded documents there is
currently no way (other than using there automated mail merge--which I can't
use as I have 20 unique letter styles) to suppress blank lines. I find this
hard to believe as I have embedded other complex if conditions around some
merge fields and they work fine when displayed. I just can't get suppress to
work.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as I am at a loss right now.

Thanks,
T

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Microsoft support has told me since I am using embedded documents there is

currently no way (other than using there automated mail merge--which I
can't
use as I have 20 unique letter styles) to suppress blank lines.

What they probably mean is that the built-in facility for suppressing blank
lines does not work in Word 2003 (and maybe 2002) when the fields are nested
inside another field - which they will be in the case you mention, assuming
you are using an INCLUDETEXT or AUTOTEXT type field to do the different
letters.

In this case, what you have to do is embed the paragraph mark in the result
of an IF field. For example,

{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD Company }" = ""
"" "
{ MERGEFIELD Company }" }

(i.e. there needs to be a paragraph mark after

"" "

)

Peter jamieson

 

[Todd]

Thanks Peter, I believe I have tried this but I can give it a shot again.
Could you please send me an example exactly how it should be written (it
appears there was a carriage return in you previous example)? BTW, I am
using INCLUDETEXT based on what letter code comes back.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[Todd]

Hi again,

Is this specificially what I need to enter? If so, it doesn't seem to be
working.


{If {MERGEFIELD Company \*MERGEFORMAT} = "" "" "¶ {MERGEFIELD Company
\*MERGEFORMAT}}

Thanks,
Todd

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The carriage returns were deliberate., but you don't need the first one
(before the "" " ). It is what you need to enter, as long as the paragraph
mark is a normal paragraph mark - i.e. do not insert the /symbol/ that looks
like a paragraph mark, just press the enter key after that opening " just as
you would at the end of an ordinary Word paragraph. Also, I would leave out
the first \*MergeFORMAT and I have a preference for enclosing the first
comparand in quotes if it might evaluate to an empty string.

The general idea is that you use something like

previous text{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD Company }" = ""
"" "
{ MERGEFIELD Company }" }
following text

 

[Todd]

Hi Peter,

That's for the help, I will give that a shot later tonight. On a related
note, if your suggestions work how would I combine two merge fields together?
I other than Company I have CoFname and CoLname together and if neither are
empty show them but if they are suppress the blank line. If one is empty the
other one will be too so I could just check one. Below is how they are in
the doc I have.

{CoFname} {CoLname}

I guess my thinking would be to combine these two fields in the if condition
into one, is there a way to do this?

Thanks Again,
Todd

 

[Graham Mayor]

{IF {Mergefield CoFname} <> "" "
{Mergefield CoFname} {Mergefield CoLname}"}

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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