Thanks for your quick response.

I can't test against the 20050609 date, because that may be a legitamite
date. I am trying to test against an empty field. So if the date merge
field is empty, then don't display anything, else display the value stored in
the date field.

Since some of these records do not have date values in them, there should
not be any value appearing (ie 06/09/2005). Also, if I don't include the
date picture (\@), Word displays 12:00:00 AM for a date merge field that
should be empty.

If the field is empty then why is Word displaying something that is not there?

-Phil-


"Graham Mayor" wrote:

You need to trap whatever the field *actually* produces, rather than what it
is supposed to produce.
Enter the following {mergefield sdate \@ "yyyyMMdd" }
Trap the resulting figure eg
{ IF { MERGEFIELD sdate \@ "yyyyMMdd" } "20050609" "{ MERGEFIELD sdate
\@"MM/dd/yyyy" }" }

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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



Phildeman wrote:
I am getting garbage when a date merge field is empty in word 2002.
I have tried:

{ IF { MERGEFIELD "sdate" } = "" "" "{ MERGEFIELD "sdate"
\@"MM/dd/yyyy" }" } Which indicates, if the merge date field is
empty, then display nothing, else display the value in the merge date
field. Yet, it displays, 06/09/2005. I checked the database and
their is no value in the field.

The database is SQL Server 2000 and I am using Access 2002 to
interface with SQL Server. Then I am using Word 2002 to interface
with Access. When I run the query that Word is using to perform the
merge, the date field displays the data correctly. I am not having
any problems with any other field, only the date field.