I would give up the struggle and use a conditional field thus

{MERGEFIELD "Date1" \@ yyyy/MM/dd}{IF{MERGEFIELD "Date2"} "" " -
{MERGEFIELD "Date2" \@ yyyy/MM/dd}"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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




Garry Jones wrote:
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
And you haven't answered her question about what the \b switch is
supposed to do.

The \b switch should place a string of text before the date2 field if
the date2 field exists.

I am not explaining this very well. I want it to look at the field
Date1 and write in the date from that field. I then want it to look
at the field Date2 and write in the date from that field as well (if
that field exists)

In Word if I write

{MERGEFIELD "Date1" \@ yyyy/MM/dd}{MERGEFIELD "Date2" \@ yyyy/MM/dd}

It does exactly what I want with one error. ie - If date1 is "29 May
2006" and date2 is "31 May 2006" it writes

2006052920060531

So I want to seperate these dates so the output in this case should be

20060529 - 20060531

If I was doing this in America I could use

{MERGEFIELD "Date1"}{MERGEFIELD "Date2" \b " - "}

And this would work perfectly and give me the space-hyphen-space
seperator required. However in my case at the same time as using the
\b switch I need to add the date format switch. The use of this seems
to cancel out all attempts of using the \b switch.

So my question is how I can use the \b switch together with the \@
switch.

The little I know of "IF" in word means I find the syntax difficult to
use, so as you suggested I realise I probably need an "IF" and I would
like some guidance in this matter.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Garry Jones
Sweden