I've downloaded a excel .csv data file that's filled with data of about
180 people, it's used to make a directory.

When I select it as my data source so that I can merge it with my form
document, Word pops up with the "Record ### contained too few data
fields." error message for several consecutive ranges of records (e.g.,
13-24, 60-78, 180-192).

I've done some reading up and testing and it seems to be caused by blank
fields in some records. When I pinpointed exactly which records and
fields were causing the problem, and put a "." or something in place of
the blank everything worked fine... except that I had a "." to deal with
then.

The worst of it is that I have many spots where there are blanks in the
data source, yet only a select few of them cause this problem, where
some of the blanks Word doesn't seem to have any problems with. As far
as I can tell there is NOTHING different between the blanks that cause
these error messages to come up and the other blanks (which are the
majority) that don't cause any problems. I've even tried copying one
blank cell and pasting it into the other bad blank cells but that
doesn't do anything.

Please tell me how I can slap this insolent excel file into shape so
that it can be used. I've actually used it before but have never
encountered this problem.

I'm using Excel and Word 2002.