Mail merge Word 2000 & Office XP Compatibility

[jimd in sc]

What changes do I have to make to a Office XP (Word 2002) document in which I
am merging name and address from MS Access fields and using switches (\f) to
suppress blank merge fields, and, to yield proper spacing between merged
fields in the document? The XP statement yields too many blank spaces when
used in Word 2000. I am trying to help someone else who only has Word 2000
and I have created templates on my Office XP system.

I get the result I want in XP, but the same statement leaves no spaces
between fields in Word 2000. if I leave a space between the fields in the
name line in Word 2000, the result is too many spaces between name fields in
the document.

Does the \f switch work in Word 2000?
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Does the \f switch work in Word 2000?

No. It was new in Word XP.

Generally speking in Word 2000 you have to use nested IF fields to achieve
the same effect.

e.g. if you have a Word XP document with the following fields

{ MERGEFIELD firstname } { MERGEFIELD middle_initial \f " " }{ MERGEFIELD
lastname }

you would need something like the following in Word 2000:

{ MERGEFIELD firstname } { IF "{ MERGEFIELD middle_initial }" = "" "" "{
MERGEFIELD middle_initial } " }{ MERGEFIELD lastname }

Each pair of {} in a nested field has to be the sort of special field braces
you can insert using ctrl-F9

Peter Jamieson