Need Help With Mail Merge—Word 2008 & Word 2007

[Ed]

It has been a long time since I performed a mail merge in Word. I need
help. I’m working with Mac Word 2008 and Windows Word 2007. So far,
I’m working on the Mac.

Here’s what I have:

«Mr/Ms» «Fame» «MI» «Lame»
«Company»
«Address1»
«Address2»
«City», «ST» «Zip»

Question 1: What field codes do I need to insert in the first line so
people without middle initials (MI) do not get 2 spaces between their
first and last names?

Question 2—Sending merged letters by email: At present, my letter is
“merged to outbox.” My letters go there, but they do not get sent, nor
can I figure out how to send them once they are in my outbox. I do
have a field for email addresses in my Excel file, and I can see in my
outbox that these email addresses are picked-up. What am I doing
wrong?

Question 3: Can I have my merged letters automatically include an
attachment? My letters will be either html or text. Or. must I
incorporate my attachments into my form letter?

Thanks,

Ed

 

[macropod]

Hi Ed,

With your «MI» field:
.. make a duplicate, so that you've got «MI» «MI»
.. then select both fields and wrap them in another field via Ctrl-F9, thus {«MI» «MI»}
.. then edit the range to look like {IF«MI»<> "" " «MI»"}
.. press F9 to update the field
.. delete the space before the field
.. run your mailmerge

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


It has been a long time since I performed a mail merge in Word. I need
help. I’m working with Mac Word 2008 and Windows Word 2007. So far,
I’m working on the Mac.

Here’s what I have:

«Mr/Ms» «Fame» «MI» «Lame»
«Company»
«Address1»
«Address2»
«City», «ST» «Zip»

Question 1: What field codes do I need to insert in the first line so
people without middle initials (MI) do not get 2 spaces between their
first and last names?

Question 2—Sending merged letters by email: At present, my letter is
“merged to outbox.” My letters go there, but they do not get sent, nor
can I figure out how to send them once they are in my outbox. I do
have a field for email addresses in my Excel file, and I can see in my
outbox that these email addresses are picked-up. What am I doing
wrong?

Question 3: Can I have my merged letters automatically include an
attachment? My letters will be either html or text. Or. must I
incorporate my attachments into my form letter?

Thanks,

Ed

 

[Ed]

Hi Ed,

With your «MI» field:
. make a duplicate, so that you've got «MI» «MI»
. then select both fields and wrap them in another field via Ctrl-F9, thus {«MI» «MI»}
. then edit the range to look like {IF«MI»<> "" " «MI»"}
. press F9 to update the field
. delete the space before the field
. run your mailmerge

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


It has been a long time since I performed a mail merge in Word. I need
help. I’m working with Mac Word 2008 and Windows Word 2007. So far,
I’m working on the Mac.

Here’s what I have:

     «Mr/Ms» «Fame» «MI» «Lame»
     «Company»
     «Address1»
     «Address2»
     «City», «ST» «Zip»

Question 1: What field codes do I need to insert in the first line so
people without middle initials (MI) do not get 2 spaces between their
first and last names?

Question 2—Sending merged letters by email: At present, my letter is
“merged to outbox.” My letters go there, but they do not get sent, nor
can I figure out how to send them once they are in my outbox. I do
have a field for email addresses in my Excel file, and I can see in my
outbox that these email addresses are picked-up. What am I doing
wrong?

Question 3: Can I have my merged letters automatically include an
attachment? My letters will be either html or text. Or. must I
incorporate my attachments into my form letter?

Thanks,

Ed

Thanks, unfortunately I still get two spaces between the First Name
and Last Name whenever there's no Middle Initial. I've spent quite a
bit of time removing "extra" spaces in the formula, but I've failed to
come up with an acceptable solution that gives the appropriate spacing
for names with and without middle initials.

I did discover the following: On the Mac it is Command-F9, not Control-
F9. And pressing the F9 key without modifiers invokes Expose/Spaces in
OS X.5

I also found the last mail merge I created 12 years ago. This
structure worked them, but not now:


«mrms» «first_name» »IF «mi»»«ENDIF»«last_name»
«IF title»«title»
«ENDIF»«company»
«address»
«city», «state»«zip»

 

[macropod]

Hi Ed,

You need to keep the spacing indicated in the formula I posted, and delete the preceding space(s) in the text. Then, the only reason
you'd get any double spaces is because you've also got them following the field - in which case you'll be getting them all the time.

The only other possibility I can think of is that you've got the paragraph in which the fields exist formatted as justified and the
line ends with a Shift-Return line-feed. In that case, justification will be causing the word spacing to expand on its own account.
You can overcome that by any one of:
.. changing the soft spaces to hard spaces
.. formatting the paragraph as left-aligned
.. inserting a tab character as the last character on the line
.. replacing the line-feeds with paragraph breaks

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]

Hi Ed,

With your «MI» field:
. make a duplicate, so that you've got «MI» «MI»
. then select both fields and wrap them in another field via Ctrl-F9, thus {«MI» «MI»}
. then edit the range to look like {IF«MI»<> "" " «MI»"}
. press F9 to update the field
. delete the space before the field
. run your mailmerge

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


It has been a long time since I performed a mail merge in Word. I need
help. I’m working with Mac Word 2008 and Windows Word 2007. So far,
I’m working on the Mac.

Here’s what I have:

«Mr/Ms» «Fame» «MI» «Lame»
«Company»
«Address1»
«Address2»
«City», «ST» «Zip»

Question 1: What field codes do I need to insert in the first line so
people without middle initials (MI) do not get 2 spaces between their
first and last names?

Question 2—Sending merged letters by email: At present, my letter is
“merged to outbox.” My letters go there, but they do not get sent, nor
can I figure out how to send them once they are in my outbox. I do
have a field for email addresses in my Excel file, and I can see in my
outbox that these email addresses are picked-up. What am I doing
wrong?

Question 3: Can I have my merged letters automatically include an
attachment? My letters will be either html or text. Or. must I
incorporate my attachments into my form letter?

Thanks,

Ed

Thanks, unfortunately I still get two spaces between the First Name
and Last Name whenever there's no Middle Initial. I've spent quite a
bit of time removing "extra" spaces in the formula, but I've failed to
come up with an acceptable solution that gives the appropriate spacing
for names with and without middle initials.

I did discover the following: On the Mac it is Command-F9, not Control-
F9. And pressing the F9 key without modifiers invokes Expose/Spaces in
OS X.5

I also found the last mail merge I created 12 years ago. This
structure worked them, but not now:


«mrms» «first_name» »IF «mi»»«ENDIF»«last_name»
«IF title»«title»
«ENDIF»«company»
«address»
«city», «state»«zip»