Hi Julie,

Calculating dates for use with mergefields is pretty complicated. The actual
coding you're after could be expressed as:
{QUOTE
{SET Delay 2}
{SET mm{=MOD({DATE \@ M}+Delay-1,12)+1}}
{SET yy{={DATE \@ yyyy}+INT((Delay+{DATE \@ M}-1)/12)}}
{SET dd{=IF(({DATE \@
d}28)*(mm=2)=1,28+((MOD(yy,4)=0)+(MOD(yy,400)=0)-(MOD(yy,100)=0)),IF((mm=4)
+(mm=6)+(mm=9)+(mm=11)+({DATE \@ d}30)1,30,{DATE \@ d}))}}
{IF{MAILMERGE Lic_1_Exp_Date \@ yyyyMMdd}{=yy*10^4+mm*10^2+dd} "" "We show
that your driver's license expires on {MAILMERGE Lic_1_Exp_Date}. Please
submit an updated copy of your driver's license."}}
where the 'Delay' value is the number of months offset to be calculated.

Much of the complication in the coding relates to months being of different
lengths, plus having to allow for year changes and leap years! If you only
needed to test the month & year, rather than the day, month and year, the
coding would be much simpler.

Most of the above code before the line starting "{IF{MAILMERGE
Lic_1_Exp_Date " comes from my 'Date Calculations' tutorial at:
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/show...?Number=249902
The particular entry I built the above from is found under the heading
"Calculate a day, date, month and year, using n (10) months delay". You may
want to use that as your starting point, rather than coding the lot from
scratch.

Cheers


"julie" wrote in message
...
Thank you all. I have this working beautifully.

Now, I have another challenge (if anyone is willing to help). I'd like to
compare the merge field date to today's date + 2 months (e.g., if today is
11/11/2005 and the merge date is 1/1/2006 or greater, I'd like to supress
the
merge field and text). Here's what I've been working with to see if I can
insert Field Date in the field code to start with, but this produces
nothing (not even an error). I'd appreciate any ideas you have. Once I
get
this working, then I'd need to figure out how to add two months to the
system
date. The following is what I see when I press SHIFT + F9...

{IF «Lic_1_Exp_date» = {DATE \* MERGEFORMAT} "" "We show that your
driver's license expires on {MERGEFIELD "Lic_1_Exp_date"}. Please submit
an
updated copy of your driver's license."}




Thank you again.
--
Julie



"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

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