Suppression of Blank Lines in Word 2002

[JOTO]

When mailmerging from a third party VB application to
Word 2002, the suppression of blank lines does not take
effect.

For example, if I have an address block as below:

{ MERGEFIELD "AddressLine1" }
{ MERGEFIELD "AddressLine2" }
{ MERGEFIELD "AddressLine3" }
{ MERGEFIELD "AddressLine4" } etc.

And if line 3 is blank I still get the blank line showing
in the address block as below:

Address results 1
Address results 2

Address results 4
etc.

Merging from within Word and other office applications is
fine and the same document merged with Word 2000 or 97 is
also fine and the blank lines are suppressed. But in
Word 2002 it will not supprss the blank lines.

Can anyone give me any suggestions of how this can be
fixed. I have over 3000 documents that will now not
merge correctly because I upgraded to Office XP. Help!!!

[Graham Mayor]

Usually Word takes care of this by itself, but where it doesn't you will
have to insert conditional fields:
{IF{Mergefield "AddressLine1" <> "" "{Mergefield AddressLine1}
"}{IF{Mergefield "AddressLine2" <> "" "{Mergefield AddressLine2}
"}{IF{Mergefield "AddressLine3" <> "" "{Mergefield AddressLine3}
"}{IF{Mergefield "AddressLine4" <> "" "{Mergefield AddressLine4}
"}etc

Note that the enter key is pressed as part of the field definition(s) so
that the line feed only occurs if the field has content.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail gma...@mvps.org
Web site www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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"JOTO" <jot...@civica.co.uk> wrote in message
news:056301c2a815$fe91e8f0$d6f82ecf@TK2MSFTNGXA13...

[Alteseel]

You are right and wrong. I've been beating my head on this for months
now, and here is what I've discovered. I don't have a solution, but I
have thoughts to keep in mind.

1. In Word 2000, marking the hard returns as hidden fixes most blank
lines when merging (as long as you do not have 'hidden text' chosen
under the general tab under Tools|Options. You are right that you
don't always need this, but unfortunately sometimes you do. Especially
documents created in wordXP and merged in word2000.

With 'hidden text' checked:

{MERGEFIELD Title}
{MERGEFIELD Title2}
{MERGEFIELD Organization}
{MERGEFIELD Organization2}
{MERGEFIELD Street1}
{MERGEFIELD Street2}
{MERGEFIELD Street3}

Without 'hidden text' checked:

{MERGEFIELD Title}{MERGEFIELD Title2}{MERGEFIELD
Organization}{MERGEFIELD Organization2}{MERGEFIELD Street1}{MERGEFIELD
Street2}{MERGEFIELD Street3}

It merges correctly if you choose to not view the hidden text (aka the
hard returns).

2. In Word 2002, marking the hard returns as hidden text doesn't solve
anything. As mentioned below, you need the conditional IF statements,
although the statements listed did not work with us. We had to go
about it a bit differently:

{ IF { MERGEFIELD Title \* MERGEFORMAT}= " " "" {MERGEFIELD Title \f "
" \* MERGEFORMAT }}

Essentially, the else part of the conditional statement includes the
hard return (therefore only in the case of data being passed through
from the data source does the hard return work.) With field codes
toggeled off, the entire header looks like this:

«Prefix» «First» «Last»
TitleTitle2OrganizationOrganization2StreetStreet2Street3«City»,
«State» «Zip»

So here is MY dilemma. The two aren't interchangeable. In an office
with both word 2000 and word XP, you can't come with one solution that
will work on both platforms. As background, there is a third party
program that merges the data into word, therefore, it is almost
entirely automated.

I hope this helped. And I also REALLY hope, someone might have a
solution for my problem.
Thanks ahead of time.

Scott Rodman
Software Rep.
sro...@creativepresence.com

"Graham Mayor" <gma...@mvps.org> wrote in message news:<Oum7RnBqCHA.1624@TK2MSFTNGP12>...

[Graham Mayor]

Is this an Excel data source?
Have you checked that you are using the same method to link to the data file
in both applications?

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail gma...@mvps.org
Web site www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

"Alteseel" <sro...@creativepresence.com> wrote in message
news:1c46ced7.03010...@posting.google.com...