Howdy,

I run Word 2000...

We have a bunch of automated processes that print documents
by dumping data to a txt file and then using Word's merge
functionality.

It works (close to) perfectly.

But, today, I used this automated process to print a welcome
letter for a program participant and I noticed an "orphan"
problem. The last lines of the letter look like this:

....on Thursday, December 1, 2005, at
8:30am. We will close at 5:00pm on December
2.

I checked to see if widow and orphan control was enabled,
and it is.

This presents a bit of a puzzle:

If I adjust the margins to accommodate the lone character, I
may very well find the problem with another form letter at a
later time because the length of the text varies depending
on the actual dates entered from our database.

Might you suggest another approach?

Very sincere thanks,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

The problem you have isn't what "widow and orphan control" is about. That's
concerned only with whether a page break is permitted just after the first
line of a paragraph or just before the last line of a paragraph. It doesn't
control the position of line breaks at all.

What you need is a nonbreaking space (entered on the keyboard with
Ctrl+Shift+spacebar) instead of an ordinary space character between the
month and the day number. I don't think there's any way to make this part of
a mail merge from a plain-text source. Instead, you'll have to arrange to
run a Replace operation on the completed form letters, looking for a month
name followed by a space and replacing it with the month name and a
nonbreaking space. That would be an excellent candidate for a macro, because
you'll need 12 separate Replace operations to catch all the months.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Kenneth wrote:
Howdy,

I run Word 2000...

We have a bunch of automated processes that print documents
by dumping data to a txt file and then using Word's merge
functionality.

It works (close to) perfectly.

But, today, I used this automated process to print a welcome
letter for a program participant and I noticed an "orphan"
problem. The last lines of the letter look like this:

...on Thursday, December 1, 2005, at
8:30am. We will close at 5:00pm on December
2.

I checked to see if widow and orphan control was enabled,
and it is.

This presents a bit of a puzzle:

If I adjust the margins to accommodate the lone character, I
may very well find the problem with another form letter at a
later time because the length of the text varies depending
on the actual dates entered from our database.

Might you suggest another approach?

Very sincere thanks,

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:49:17 -0500, "Jay Freedman"
wrote:

The problem you have isn't what "widow and orphan control" is about. That's
concerned only with whether a page break is permitted just after the first
line of a paragraph or just before the last line of a paragraph. It doesn't
control the position of line breaks at all.

What you need is a nonbreaking space (entered on the keyboard with
Ctrl+Shift+spacebar) instead of an ordinary space character between the
month and the day number. I don't think there's any way to make this part of
a mail merge from a plain-text source. Instead, you'll have to arrange to
run a Replace operation on the completed form letters, looking for a month
name followed by a space and replacing it with the month name and a
nonbreaking space. That would be an excellent candidate for a macro, because
you'll need 12 separate Replace operations to catch all the months.

Hi Jay,

Please accept my thanks for your interesting comments...

Might you know if the "non-breaking" space used by Word is
available as a particular ASCII character? I ask because if
it were, I could just have the text file(s) incorporate it
in each of the dates.

Thanks again,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

The non breaking space is ANSI character 160.

Depending, perhaps, on the exact format of your dates (whether or not the
MailMerge recognises them) you may be able to add a format to the merge
field ...

{ MERGEFIELD "YourDate" \@ "MMMM*d" }

(where the asterisk represents a hard space (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) - and the
braces are as created by Word for the mergefield. If you dont see the
mergefields looking like this, press Alt+F9 to toggle the field view.)

--
Enjoy,
Tony


"Kenneth" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:49:17 -0500, "Jay Freedman"
wrote:

The problem you have isn't what "widow and orphan control" is about.
That's
concerned only with whether a page break is permitted just after the
first
line of a paragraph or just before the last line of a paragraph. It
doesn't
control the position of line breaks at all.

What you need is a nonbreaking space (entered on the keyboard with
Ctrl+Shift+spacebar) instead of an ordinary space character between the
month and the day number. I don't think there's any way to make this part
of
a mail merge from a plain-text source. Instead, you'll have to arrange to
run a Replace operation on the completed form letters, looking for a
month
name followed by a space and replacing it with the month name and a
nonbreaking space. That would be an excellent candidate for a macro,
because
you'll need 12 separate Replace operations to catch all the months.

Hi Jay,

Please accept my thanks for your interesting comments...

Might you know if the "non-breaking" space used by Word is
available as a particular ASCII character? I ask because if
it were, I could just have the text file(s) incorporate it
in each of the dates.

Thanks again,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:26:24 -0000, "Tony Jollans" My
Forename at My Surname dot com wrote:

The non breaking space is ANSI character 160.

Depending, perhaps, on the exact format of your dates (whether or not the
MailMerge recognises them) you may be able to add a format to the merge
field ...

{ MERGEFIELD "YourDate" \@ "MMMM*d" }

(where the asterisk represents a hard space (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) - and the
braces are as created by Word for the mergefield. If you dont see the
mergefields looking like this, press Alt+F9 to toggle the field view.)

--
Enjoy,
Tony

Hi Tony,

I appreciate your suggestion, but in my situation it might
be easier if I just had my database write the dates with the
ANSI 160 included. I will experiment with that approach.

Sincere thanks,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."