[Graham Mayor]

Don't insert the fields - type them in, using CTRL+F9 for each pair of
brackets.
Finally update the field F9.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


********Meg wrote:
Are those quotes or some other symbol? Am I inserting the field or
typing it in. When I insert it, comes with quotes


"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
Replace what you have with

{ IF{ MERGEFIELD RequiredReading } "" "Required Reading: {
Mergefield RequiredReading }"}

Use CTRL+F9 for each set of field brackets and type the rest. Format
"Required Reading:" as bold font and the
final { Mergefield RequiredReading }as italic.


--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


********Meg wrote:
thanks, I think I understand what you are saying, but I'm not clear
in how to do the formatting. This is VERY new for me.

here is what I have
{mergefeild Required Reading\b "required reading:'}

I want the text Required Reading (which is the text that will appear
if there is anything in the field ) to be bold and the content of
the field to be italics (i.e., it's a book title so it should be).

Ex:
Required Reading (in bold): How to use excel, by So and So (in
italics)
thanks for your help, if this can work. it would be GREAT!


Meg


"Microsoft Public Groups" wrote in
message ...
Assuming you are using

{ MERGEFIELD myfield \b "beforetext: " }

I don't think you can achieve the formatting you need using that
technique (even replacing "beforetext" by "{ QUOTE beforetext:
\*Charformat } and formatting the Q the way you want does not
work). Instead, try

{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD myfield }" = "" "" "beforetext:: { MERGEFIELD
myfield\*Charformat }" }

then format beforetext: the way you want it and format the M of the
second MERGEFIELD the way you want it.

Ensure all the {} are ht especial field code braces you can insert
using ctrl-F9

Peter Jamieson

"********Meg" wrote in
message ...
I recently learned (very happily, I might add) to edit a mail
merge field to include text before or after that field. Another
fabulous feature is that the text will not appear if there is no
data in the datasource for that particular record. This is a
very cool feature. (office 2003) However, I want to format both the
text
that is before the field
and the actual data in the field (one would be bold and one would
be italics) When I change the info in my form, it looks good, but
when I do the merge,
all of the formatting disappears. If I italicize the information
in the data source document , it looses it's formatting as well.

any ideas?

thanks

--
Meg