Unwanted blanks in mail merge.

[Bobbler]

I am using Word 2003 and doing a very simple mail merge. I am inserting three
fields (Title, First Name and Surname) with a blank between each. When a
record without either Title, or First Name is processed the blanks that I
inserted between the fields are retained, meaning that I end up with more
blanks than intended. OK, Word is printing exactly what I specified, but I
rather hoped it would recognise when a field was absent and drop the blank
accordingly. Any ideas, please?

 

[macropod]

Hi Bobbler,

I can't see how one could reasonably expect Word to know you wanted it to delete the gaps you inserted.

Nevertheless, to suppress the gap after a particular mergefield-
.. duplicate the mailmerge field associated with the gap to be suppressed (eg «MyData») so that you get:
«MyData»«MyData»;
.. select both fields and Press Ctrl-F9, you'll get:
{ «MyData»«MyData» };
.. fill in between the braces so that you end up with:
{IF«myData»= "" "" "«MyData»*"},
where the '*' is the character you want to suppress (eg space, tab, paragraph mark);
.. delete the existing paragraph mark or line-feed that's outside the mergefield;
.. position the cursor anywhere in this field and press F9 to update it;
.. run your mailmerge.

To supress a gap before the mergefield, simply use "*«MyData»" instead of "«MyData»*"