unable to delete orphaned close field brace in first page footer

[Guest]

In Word 2003, users of a rather large mailmerge document reported that it
would preview and print out a right curly brace in the footer of the first
page.

More investigation revealed that the right curly brace is an orphaned close
field brace which is situated beside the close field brace of an IF
construct as follows:

{ IF { MERGEFIELD Sender } = "condition" "condition true" "condition
false" }}

So far I've been unable to delete this orphaned close field brace.

Putting the cursor immediately to the orphaned close field brace's right and
presseing the Backspace key just highlights the second page's header.

I'm unable to put the cursor immediately before the orphaned close field
brace, in fact the closest I could position the cursor to the orphaned close
field brace's left is to the left of the IF field's close field brace, and
when I press the Delete key there, it again highlight's the second page's
header.

Recreating the mailmerge document to remove the orphaned close field brace
will be a considerable effort, so any suggestions are welcome.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The only thing I can think of is as follows:
a. create a new document with just the fields that should be there
b. save it in .rtf format. Or perhaps full HTML format with supporting
files.
c. save your existing document in .rtf format (you will lose macros,
though). Or save in .htm format
d. open both files in Notepad so you can see the rtf/html code
e. find the code for the fields (e.g. perhaps look for "MERGEFIELD Sender"
f. see if you can work out the difference between the two chunks of
rtf/html and remove anything that should not be there
g. reopen and if everything seems OK, re-save as .doc

(f) may be pretty difficult but if necessary, post back with whatever you
think are the chunks that contain the relevant code and I'll see what I can
do.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

With the whole thing selected try using a macro that contains the command
Selection.Fields(1).Select and see if it just selects the If...then...Else
field construction, if so, try copying that to the clipboard, then select
the whole thing again and then use Ctrl+v to paste the contents of the
clipboard and see if it over writes the rogue field.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Guest]

Thanks to Peter and Doug for their suggestions.

Here's how I was able to work around this issue.

Currently, to remove this requires cutting and pasting sections of the
document into a new file (i.e. all the recipient lines, then all the subject
lines, then all the body text, etc.).

Note that doing a select all copied the orphaned close field brace, so it's
important to do this section by section.

The header and footer text needs to be cut and pasted into the body of a
separate document, and from there it should be possible to introduce spaces
or a line/paragraph break to separate the orphaned close field brace.

Once the orphaned close field brace is separated, cut and paste the header
and footer text into the new document containing the body sections.

Remember to copy the macros as well.