My Excel 2010 spread sheet's source data field contains a value of "YES" or "NO". My Word 2010 template's merge field causes either "YES" or "NO" to appear in its place in the merged document. Is there a way to define the merge field to cause the word "email" to be inserted instead of "YES" and for "hardcopy" to be inserted instead of "NO"?

Hi Charlie,

You can use an IF field, coded along the lines of:
{IF«MyField»= "YES" "email" "hardcopy"}
where 'MyField' is the field name in your data.

Note: The field brace pairs (ie '{ }') for the above example are created via Ctrl-F9 - you can't simply type them or copy & paste them from this message. Likewise, you can't type or copy & paste the chevrons (ie '« »') - they're part of the actual mergefields, which you can insert from the mailmerge toolbar.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Paul - Thanks so much! I'm taking your "IF..." statement to mean, "If the field contains "Yes," substitute "electronic" and otherwise substitute "hardcopy". I'll try to acquire a better understanding of how "IF..." works. Thanks again for putting me on the right track.

See the Field Codes Reference for IF Field
{ IF Expression1 Operator Expression2 TrueText FalseText }


Sometimes quotation marks around things are needed since the field uses spaces as delimiters.