Retain formatting of my data source using mail merge in Word?

[CRS]

I have a data source where some of the fields contain formatted text (i.e.
some use of bold, italics, color, etc. - intermixed as part of the phrases).
I am using the mail merge feature of Word to create a directory-format output
of this data, but unfortunately, none of the formatting from the data source
comes with it.

I found a post (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA011173181033.aspx)
which talks about applying the same format to all the text in field. This
doesn't solve my problem because it is the formatting of the text within the
fields that is variable in my case. Is there any solution for me with Word?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The only way you really have a chance of retaining formatting of this kind
in a merge is as follows:
a. your data source should be a Word table
b. where you want to retain the formatting, instead of a normal merge file
such as { MERGEFIELD myfield }, use { REF myfield } (or perhaps simply {
myfield }

To retain existing formatting and do that, there must be a mechanism that
lets you copy/paste your material, with formatting into Word table format.
If ordinary Copy/Paste doesn't work, try Word Paste Special. If that doesn't
help, you probably can't do it. If you have more than 63 or 64 columns, you
certainly won't be able to do that unless copying/pasting into a non-table
format works the way you need.

There is one other possible approach. If you can save your formatted texts
as files in .rtf format, you should be able to use INCLUDETEXT fields to
include the texts with their formatting. If that seems like an option, what
is your data source and how would you export each record's data in .rtf
format?

Peter Jamieson

 

[CRS]

Thank you very much--that worked perfectly! I switched my datasource from an
Excel spreadsheet to Word and then dropped the "MERGEFIELD" command from the
field definition and that did it. When I replaced, "MERGEFIELD" with "REF"
that gave an error, so I'm glad you mentioned the alternative of just using
the field name.