gratuitous commas in city line

[JT]

My other merges for envelopes have worked fine, but now
the program is inserting a random comma at the beginning
of each city line. These commas are not in the mailmerge
list of addresses, and I don't see how to edit them out.
Help?

Thx.

 

[Graham Mayor]

They are almost certainly in the address block of the merge document and are
the result of missing address lines.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
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Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Jt,

My other merges for envelopes have worked fine, but now
the program is inserting a random comma at the beginning
of each city line. These commas are not in the mailmerge
list of addresses, and I don't see how to edit them out.

Let's start with which version of Word you're using?

What's your data source?

How are you inserting the addresses (exact steps)?

What is your regional location?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jan 24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
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[JT]

-----Original Message-----
Hi Jt,

Let's start with which version of Word you're using?

Word 2002

What's your data source?

An address list I converted from an ordinary word
document into the Merge form using a tab field delimiter

How are you inserting the addresses (exact steps)?

see above. At the Match Fields section I selected the 1st
and last name line of the address for the line that asked
for 1st name, the street address line for Address 1, and
the city, state, and Zip line for the City line. I didn't
do anything different between my "1st Name" and "Address
1" lines than I did between the "Address 1" and
the "City" lines, yet the comma appeared on every
envelope, followed by a space,at the beginning of the
city line on the actual envelope.

What is your regional location?

Southern California

Thanks for your help.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Although I don't use it myself, I see nothing in the address block option
that adds a comma at the end of each field, (and the insertion of individual
fields does not) so the commas are either coming from your data source or
you have added them between the fields. Obviously where there is an
otherwise empty field the comma will still be placed.
If you want commas only to appear when the record contains data, you are
either going to have to include the commas in your data source where they
are required, or use condition fields to test whether the field is empty
before inserting it and the following comma.
Although aimed at more complicated labels, you might find
http://www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm
provides some useful background to merging with Word 2002.
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Jt,

Southern California

I meant the setting in Windows Control Panel <LOL>

FWIW, what you describe sounds to me like the
idiosyncracies non-English language environments run into
when trying to use the AddressBlock.

Select some text in the document, then look with which
language it's formatted (either in the Status bar or
tools/language/set language). If it's not English, Ctrl+A
then select English (US).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jan 24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You will certainly get this if the City field in your data source is
blank/empty but the state is present. Is it possible that the field mapped
to "City" in "Mapped fields" is not the field that actually contains the
City name?