[Bonnie]

How do I get rid of the blank areas on my merged document when the field is
empty? 97 allowed you to move the next line up but I cannot find this
feature in 2003.

Also, when I merge my data, I am getting (space)0 in some places where there
is not data in the field. Any suggestions on why and how to get rid of them?

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

If you activate the old Mail Merge Helper by selecting Customize from the
Tools menu and then select the All Commands Category on the Commands tab and
the scroll down through the list of commands until you located it and then
drag it onto a toolbar or onto the expanded Tools menu, you can usually go
back to having the previous ability.

If that fails, you can get around the problem by using an
If...then...Else... field
construction that test for the presence of data in the field in question.
If there is data, it inserts that field followed by a linefeed of carriage
return and then the next merge field. If there is no data, it inserts the
next field alone.

{ IF { MERGEFIELD fieldthatmightbeempty } "" "{ MERGEFIELD
fieldthatmightbeempty } [Shift+Enter]
{ MERGEFIELD nextmergefield }" "{ MERGEFIELD nextmergefield }" }

You must use Ctrl+F9 to insert each pair of field delimiters { } and you use
Alt+F9 to toggle of their display.
Check Word Tools|Options|General|"COnfirm conversion at open", reconnect to
your data source, and choose the DDE option when it is offered.

Peter Jamieson posted the following in relation to the other problem that
you mention.

This occurs because when the data types in an Excel column are mixed (e.g.
some things look like numbers and some things look like text), the OLEDB
provider that Word uses to get the data makes a choice based on which data
type predominates in the first 25 rows of the column. So even if it worked
before, changes to the data can change the behaviour. There are one or two
other approaches that may help, but the DDE one is generally the best
starting point

--
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

"Bonnie" wrote in message
...
How do I get rid of the blank areas on my merged document when the field
is
empty? 97 allowed you to move the next line up but I cannot find this
feature in 2003.

Also, when I merge my data, I am getting (space)0 in some places where
there
is not data in the field. Any suggestions on why and how to get rid of
them?