The addressblock doesn't give you a lot of control over the formatting.

You can use alt-F9 to reveal the ADDRESSBLOCK field codes.

You should see various "address elements" such as <<_CITY_>>. Where you see
punctuation such as "," /inside/ the << >>, that punctuation should only be
applied when (e.g.) _CITY_ is non-blank. When you see punctuation /outside
the << >>, that punctuation should always appear.

So in theory you can get rid of most punctuation by removing it from within
the ADDRESSBLOCK. Unfortunately
a. you can edit the ADDRESSBLOCK content directly, but if you ever use
Word's standard features to alter the content of the ADDRESSBLOCK or modify
the field mappings, Word will re-impose a standard ADDRESSBLOCK layout and
overwrite your changes
b. some punctuation may be inserted by ADDRESSBLOCK (as far as I know, it
is only in the first line) whatever you do.

The alternative is to use individual field codes { MERGEFIELD city } or
whatever, nested within IF fields if you need to include some fields
conditionally.

I don't know the rules for address layout everywhere (I am in the U.K.) but
if you are in the U.S.A. I find it slightly strange that your mal sorting
company would not recognise
a. punctuation in address lines submitted by (e.g.) your customers, who
ought to know their own addresses
b. punctuation in the City, State ZIP line (which seems until fairly
recently to have had a comma as standard, and I must say I thought it was a
USPostal Service Standard, but maybe not)

block as the new sorting machines don't recognize punctuation....I can't
find a way to remove it in the address block, any ideas?????  Thanks & I'll
surf your problems to see if I can help you with any problems....thanks
again!!  Tari

Hi =?Utf-8?B?dGFyaQ==?=,

machines don't recognize punctuation....I can't find a way to remove it in the address
block

I concur with everything Peter says. Just one additional suggestion:

Once you have an AddressBlock field code that's working, select it and save it as an
AutoText entry. Then you should be able to reuse it without having to continuously jump
through all the hoops again.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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