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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / March 2006Eliminating a value in a mail merge
I have a mail merge where I want to eliminate printing a field if it contains a particular value. But I still want to print the record. It's just the field I want to skip. Can anyone suggest how to do this? Thanks! Myrna You use an IF field. For example, if you don't want to print the value of a field called myfield when it is "M", use { IF "{ MERGEFIELD myfield }" = "M" "" "{ MERGEFIELD myfield }" } All the special {} pairs can be entered using ctrl-F9. Everything else is plain text you can type. Peter Jamieson >I have a mail merge where I want to eliminate printing a field if it > contains a particular value. But I still want to print the record. It's > just the field I want to skip. Can anyone suggest how to do this? > > Thanks! > Myrna Thanks, this sounds good. Now one more question - how do I do this if I want to say 'don't print this field if it contains the word "blank" ' I guess I need more help than I thought - where do I put the IF statement? I thought it would go on the mail merge document but that doesn't seem to work. It does, but if you need to detect the word "blank" anywhere in the mere field text, it won't work, sorry. Peter Jamieson >I guess I need more help than I thought - where do I put the IF > statement? I thought it would go on the mail merge document but that > doesn't seem to work. Sorry if I misunderstood - you can't do a test using simple fields for 'this field's text contains the word "blank"' unless you happen to know that "blank" is at the beginning or end of the text. You may be able to do that a. in the data source before you merge, or b. using a DATABASE field if the data source uses a suitable dialect of SQL (it is difficult to recommend this approach anyway) c. using VBA and Word's mailmerge events to examine the content of the field before each record is merged. Peter Jamieson > Thanks, this sounds good. Now one more question - how do I do this if I > want to say 'don't print this field if it contains the word "blank" ' I looked at doing it in the select but this will delete the records having the word 'blank'. I'm not sure how to say that I want to keep the record but clear the field for this merge. Any thoughts? You could use an expression in the SELECT to create another field, e.g. in Jet SQL, something like SELECT iif(instr(myfield,'blank',1) = 0, myfield, '') AS 'mynewfield', * FROM .... (My syntax probably isn't quite right there) Peter Jamieson >I looked at doing it in the select but this will delete the records > having the word 'blank'. I'm not sure how to say that I want to keep > the record but clear the field for this merge. Any thoughts? You could use an expression in the SELECT to create another field, e.g. in Jet SQL, something like SELECT iif(instr(myfield,'blank',1) = 0, myfield, '') AS 'mynewfield', * FROM .... (My syntax probably isn't quite right there) Peter Jamieson >I looked at doing it in the select but this will delete the records > having the word 'blank'. I'm not sure how to say that I want to keep > the record but clear the field for this merge. Any thoughts? Can we clarify what is in this field? Does it contain just the word 'blank' or does it contain 'blank' and some other text? Are you merging just that field?  Signature<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org <>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> > I looked at doing it in the select but this will delete the records > having the word 'blank'. I'm not sure how to say that I want to keep > the record but clear the field for this merge. Any thoughts? The field contains a statement "This field intentionally left blank". I am merging many fields and this is just one of them. I don't want to skip the record, I just want to print nothing if this is in the field. Myrna Matching an exact text is straightforward - just use the whole text instead of the single word example I gave before. If the text is the same apart from capitalisation you can use the appropriate \* switches in your MERGEFIELD field to make the text upper or lower case. You can also use wildcards to a limited extent, e.g. { IF { MERGEFIELD myfield } = "*blank" "x" "y" } should give you "x" if myfield contains your sample text. You can also do { IF { MERGEFIELD myfield } = "something*" "x" "y" } but you can't achieve a "contains" using { IF { MERGEFIELD myfield } = "*something*" "x" "y" } It doesn't work. Also, you may find that matching only works on relatively short texts up to 128 characters. There's more about this in Word Help. Peter Jamieson > The field contains a statement "This field intentionally left blank". I > am merging many fields and this is just one of them. I don't want to > skip the record, I just want to print nothing if this is in the field. > Myrna
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