Skip mail merge fields from Excel Workbook when blank/zero

[akumudzi]

I am creating mail merge letters (pay-slips) in Word 2003 from a list
of about 300 employee records in Excel.
The list has 28 fields and some of the values in some of the fields in
the workbook are blank or zero.

What I need is that, when a value is blank or zero, then that field
(both field name and value) dosen't show at all on the letter so as to
make each pay slip contain only data that is non-zero and therefore
relevant to its recipient. E.g. if the 'Overtime' field for a record is
blank/zero (meaning this employee does ont receive overtime) then that
field doesnt even show on the letter.

In the letter, each filed is in its own row in a table. I've tried
using the "IF...Then...Else" condition for mail merge but it leaves a
space in the row when a field is blank/zero resulting in too may empty
rows in the letter.
I'm looking for a solution to taking only the fields I want from the
Excel sheet. Also, If there's a way to to automatically remove the
empty rows in the table when they're blank I'd finish of the solution
I'd started. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Akumudzi

akumudzi wrote:
[..]

In the letter, each filed is in its own row in a table. I've tried
using the "IF...Then...Else" condition for mail merge but it leaves a
space in the row when a field is blank/zero resulting in too may empty
rows in the letter.
I'm looking for a solution to taking only the fields I want from the
Excel sheet. Also, If there's a way to to automatically remove the
empty rows in the table when they're blank I'd finish of the solution
I'd started. Hope this makes sense.

I'm sure a VBA procedure could be written to run through the final
document (result of the merge to new document) and delete empty table rows.

Other than that, I think you're right, you cannot suppress the table row
-- unless you create a small 1-row table for each line and include this
whole table in the IF field. The macro solution sounds like less work to
me, even though I don't really know whether it takes much to recognize
an empty table row. Ask the gurus in the .vba groups if you need help
with that.

Greetinx
Robert