[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Not sure what happened to your first question, but for the second one, use
an If...then...Else field construction

{ IF { MERGEFIELD "nameoffieldthatmightbeempty" } ="" "{ MERGEFIELD
"nextmergefield" }" "{ MERGEFIELD "nameoffieldthatmightbeempty" }¶
{ MERGEFIELD "nextmergefield" }" }

where the ¶ appears in the above construction, press the Enter key. You
must use Ctrl+F9 to insert each pair of the field delimiters { } and use
Alt+F9 to toggle off their display.

For your second (sorry third) question, while you may be able to set up a
new sheet in Excel that references the data in the existing sheet, using a
Function to move things over, a low tech way of doing it would be to sort
the data by as many fields as your version of Excel will allow (that is by
the second, then the third, then the fourth, etc) then select and delete
each of the empty blocks of cells, moving the data to the left.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
"Yookaroo" wrote in message
...
2) how can I add a soft return after a field but only if it exists, so
there
is no space if there is no data in the field

3) as I have 16,000 records in 4 databases this is a big one for me, I
have
41 columns and 41 products (Each product isnt named, its represented by a
number, but they dont always have product one in column 1, product 2 in
column 2... Some have product 6 in column 2 and product 7 in column 3
there
are a ton of different formats. Some people get all 41 some people get
less.
So can I :

a) is there a way to format the excel file that will move the 2's under
the
2 column, the 3's under the 3 column etc...?

b) Is there a way to tell mail merge that when it encounters a 1 in a
field
to post product name 1, if it finds 2 post product name 2 etc...