You need to create this field by hand. Press Ctrl+F9 to insert field
delimiters (the things that look like braces but can't be entered from the
keyboard) and type the text between them (you'll need to insert the merge
fields from the Mail Merge toolbar or by entering another hand-constructed
field).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"julie" wrote in message
...
Thank you both for your quick help. I've tried to paste the example into
the
Advanced Field Properties Field Codes field and even when I can get the
whole string in, I don't get an active OK button. Is there a trick to
this
or another place I should go to edit the statement?
Thanks again,
--
Julie

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

An extra quote mark sneaked in to Macropod's reply - try

{IF{MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@ yyyyMMdd}= 0 "" "We show that your
auto
insurance expires on {MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@ dd/MM/yyyy}.
Please
submit proof of insurance including your name and new expiration date."}

With some versions of Word setting a nul result as the first option can
cause the wrong data to be entered. I therefore prefer to avoid this by
reversing the conditions thus:

{IF{MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@ yyyyMMdd} 0 "We show that your
auto
insurance expires on {MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@ dd/MM/yyyy}.
Please
submit proof of insurance including your name and new expiration date."}

The result should be the same.

There is some information on field formatting on my web site at
http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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


macropod wrote:
Hi Julie,

Try:

{IF{MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@ yyyyMMdd}= 0 "" ""We show that
your auto insurance expires on {MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-Date \@
dd/MM/yyyy}. Please submit proof of insurance including your name
and new expiration date."}

Cheers


"julie" wrote in message
...
Using Word 2003, I'd like to suppress a merge field if certain
conditions exist, along with the preceeding and following text.
I've been using the MergeField options (obtained when I right click
on a merge field and choose Edit Field): Text to be included before
& Text to be included after to combine my merge field with text.

If I look at the Field Codes after setting up my text, I see...

MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due_DAte \b "We show that your auto insurance
expires on " \f ". Please submit proof of insurance including your
name and new expiration date."

Is there a way I can add an If, then, else to this so that If
MERGEFIELD Rubella_Due-DAte = 00/00/00 the merge field and it's
preceding and following text is suppressed? Can I simply edit the
Field Codes text to include this?

I apologize if this is a dumb question. I'm new to conditional
formatting in Word. I'd also appreciate any pointers to good
documents or books on this topic.

Thanks,
--
Julie