Thanks, Doug.

I'm not sure what you meant in your answer, but I
understand the request for clarity.

I am using a program that keeps track of personal
information related to litigation. The program generates,
internally, a merge data file and performs the merge to
yield a document. I can define the merge document format,
but the program contains all the merge fields internally.
Thus, even though I input last name, first name and middle
initial in separate places on a form, the program only has
merge fields for output as regular text (firstname
middleinitial. lastname) or formatted text
(lastname/firstname/middleinitial).

To create a letter, I want to use the last name only. I
can edit the resulting document, but that's inelegant, and
adds to the cost of producing the document. I would like
to get a subset of the regular text string or formatted
text string that is placed into the document by the
program.

I figured out a way to do it in WordPerfect by adding
about a page of codes to the beginning of each master
document template. But, WordPerfect has many other issues
that make is less desireable to use than Word.

I'm not sure that what I want to do can be done in Word.
If not, that's ok, I'd just like to know for sure one way
or the other.

Thanks for your prompt response.