Mail Merge.

[Sam]

Hi ...

A couple of days ago I posted a question about making text look prettier
in a table. Mr. Doug Robbins gave me a prompt reply, and I thank him.

Now I have my table. A thing of beauty. I close the document and open
Mail Merge. (I am not doing Mail Merge with a macro, just trying to print
envelopes manually.) But when I try to use the document with my table as the
data source, the envelopes don't look right. They look like this:

John Smith
8993 Main St.

Reno

NV 89013

Why the blank line between address and city, and between city and state??

Well, I figured it must be because empty cells in table are not really
empty. They have <Line Feed> and <Return> characters in them. Can they be
erased?? Apparently not.

I had another idea. Saved the table as a text file. I tried to use that
as the data source. This time when I tried to Mail Merge, a window popped up
saying the record didn't have enough data fields.

I gotta admit that concept is too esoteric for me. The right number of
data fields for a record to have is the number that it actually has. If it
has six fields, then the right number for it to have is six. If it has
seven, the right number for it to have is seven. Is that not right??

A data record, by definition, cannot have fewer or more fields than it
actually has. Can it?? I simply don't understand.

Anyway, my problem is to use the data, somehow, to create labels (or
envelopes.) Would appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Sam

A man who had lately declared
That property ought to be shared,
Thought it going too far
When they called for his car,
And a list of exceptions prepared.

Thomas Thorneley,
From The Penguin
Book Of Limericks

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Sam,

You need to post this in the word.mailmerge.fields newsgroup. Please DO
mention the following information when you do:

1. Version of Word involved
2. How you've set up the table Doug helped you with; how is it structured
3. Show us how the labels have been set up. Where have you inserted what merge
fields? What I'm after is: are there any mergefields on these empty lines?
Mergefields that contain no information for that particular record, for
example?

A couple of days ago I posted a question about making text look prettier
in a table. Mr. Doug Robbins gave me a prompt reply, and I thank him.

Now I have my table. A thing of beauty. I close the document and open
Mail Merge. (I am not doing Mail Merge with a macro, just trying to print
envelopes manually.) But when I try to use the document with my table as the
data source, the envelopes don't look right. They look like this:

John Smith
8993 Main St.

Reno

NV 89013

Why the blank line between address and city, and between city and state??

Well, I figured it must be because empty cells in table are not really
empty. They have <Line Feed> and <Return> characters in them. Can they be
erased?? Apparently not.

I had another idea. Saved the table as a text file. I tried to use that
as the data source. This time when I tried to Mail Merge, a window popped up
saying the record didn't have enough data fields.

I gotta admit that concept is too esoteric for me. The right number of
data fields for a record to have is the number that it actually has. If it
has six fields, then the right number for it to have is six. If it has
seven, the right number for it to have is seven. Is that not right??

A data record, by definition, cannot have fewer or more fields than it
actually has. Can it?? I simply don't understand.

Anyway, my problem is to use the data, somehow, to create labels (or
envelopes.) Would appreciate any help.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail