I am using the follwoing with mail merge directory.

«Patient_Name»
CHART # «Patient_»
DOB: «DOB»
cc: «Primary_Care_Physician»
WCB (7) Insurance: «Ins_Plan»
«Employer»
«Injury_Date»


«No_Fault»

If cc, WCB, Employer, Injury Date, No Fault are empty in excel (not all have this but some do), I get a lot of extra blank lines before the next entry. How can I fix this?

Thank you

You can suppress the empty lines using the mergefield \b or \f switches. First turn on Word's formatting display so you can see the ↵ & ¶ symbols that represent line & paragraph breaks. To conditionally suppress, the «Employer» field for example:
• select the field and press Shift-F9 to expose the field code. You should see
{MERGERFIELD Employer}¶
• Edit the field code so you get
{MERGERFIELD Employer \f "¶
"}
Note that the paragraph break is now inside the field and the «Injury_Date» field is now immediately after the "}
Similarly, to suppress the 'WCB (7) Insurance: «Ins_Plan»' line:
• select the field and press Shift-F9 to expose the field code. You should see
«Ins_Plan»
• Edit the field code so you get
{MERGERFIELD Ins_Plan \b "WCB (7) Insurance: " \f "¶
"}
Note that the 'WCB (7) Insurance: ' text and the paragraph break are now both inside the field.

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

Thank you. I tried to do what you said but can't seem to get it working. I will attach my file here. I already has some formatting inside the brackets and maybe that is why I'm struggling.

Attached Files

extra lines in directory.doc (25.5 KB, 12 views)

I see you have implemented the \b switches, but you haven't implemented the \f switches...

As for the prefix text, if you don't want the \* Caps switch to apply to that, you'd need to use a nested field construction like:
{IF{ MERGEFIELD "Employer" } <> "" "Employer name: { MERGEFIELD "Employer" \* Caps}¶
"}

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

Thank you for your help. I think this is above my ability at the present time.

It's really not that difficult. See attached.

Attached Files

Redzan.doc (26.5 KB, 15 views)

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