Greg,

 Thanks for answering. I'm not sure where the code goes in the gui
where you edit a field (codes visible or not). And I didn't use ctrl+
f9.

  I guess one of the problems with not knowing about something is that
you have a hard time framing a questions :-). What I'm trying to do is
create a field in a merge document. I insert a merge field from my
database. Then I edit that field. At first there's a field name field
for me to specify a field. Out of desperation I tried putting the code
with the curly brackets there but it doesn't work.

 So I toggled field codes and put it in the resulting field codes
field. That didn't work either. Just to check I added the merge field
unchanged and ran the merge, just too see if it was reading the field
correclty. It was.

 So, where do I put that code. And do I have to use control f9 to
enter the curly brackets?

 Sorry to be such a newbie. Basically I'm a .net programmer and don't
deal with word as often as I should. It's often a lot faster to use
word to do certain things than to write a program.

Neil