Hi ?B?Sm9obg==?=,

I am using Office 2000 with XP operating system.

I could hug you for giving us this information, right at the top :-)

You need to incorporate an IF field in the main merge document. The IF field
will test whether the mergefield is passing a zero-length string, and insert
nothing, or a space, accordingly.

This type of IF is very easy to set up. On the mail merge toolbar you'll see a
button labelled "Insert Word field". Click that and choose the
"If...Then...Else" entry (or something similar, I don't recall the exact
caption).

You should see a dialog box where you can select the mergefield you want to
test, the value to test against ("is blank"), a box for the "true" result (leave
it empty) and a box for the false result (type a space).

I have a database (excel) and form files (word) set up.

The merge codes in question are "client first name" "client middle initial"
and "client last name"

My problem is that some of the "client middle initial" files/records are
blank and therefore leave an empy space between "client first name" and
"client last name" in my letter after the merge process has taken place. I
want to have that space automatically closed during the merge process if that
"client middle initial" file is blank. If the "client middle initial" file
has information contained within it, then I want to, of course, have that
information placed in the document when merging.

How do I accomplish this?


Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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