want an error alert in mail merge

[error display in word]

hi,
when i mail merge using doc as my external source i made a field constant
using " if then else" from the 'insert word field ' tool.My result was
working fine.

requirement:
when i enter a replacement text other than what i had mentioned in the "if
then else " case i should get an error as we get in excel("data.. validation
.. show errors ).But its not prompting me for errors ...please help me on this
..

regards,
leo

 

[Peter Jamieson]

As far as Word is concerned, an IF field just does what it says - if you
have { IF { myfield } = "X" "ABC" "" } then Word isn't going to do anything
special if { myfield } is not "X" - it just inserts a "".

If all you want is for Word to display a dialog box when { myfield } is not
"X" you can probably do that by using an invalid field, for example

{ IF { myfield } = "X" "ABC" "{=;}" }

However, this is a standard dialog box (it does not say what is wrong) and
this type of error will not prevent the merge from either continuing, or
outputting that Letter/Directory entry.

If you need to be selective about which records are merged, you can
- filter the records in the data source using Edit Recipients or
- (in some cases) use SKIPIF fields to cancel processing for records that
meet certain criteria or
- use Word VBA and Mailmerge events to prevent processing of certain
records.