I have an excel data source see the crude example below:



Name | performance dropdown box | Date of appraisal
Joe | { MERGEFIELD "Name" } is a good employee |2017/02/10



What I am trying to do is merge data to a template appraisal form and I want to personalize the performance comments by embedding the first name into the list of value chosen. I can't concatenate since the name may be required in different positions in the text. Can this be done somehow?

Thanks

It's not clear what you want, but you can't add mergefields to dropdowns; you can insert them before the dropdown, however, provided the dropdown is a content control - dropdown formfields don't survive a mailmerge.

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

The dropdown is in excel the datasource! I figured that if I use the substitute function to add the name to the appraisal comment it will work in excel then I merge after to the word document. Thanks for looking at it!

Well, if you've got:
Name | performance dropdown box | Date of appraisal
Joe | is a good employee | 2017/02/10
in Excel - since you can't possibly have a mergefield there, you should be able to merge the data to Word, where you can have { MERGEFIELD "Name" }, etc. scattered throughout the document as often as you need.

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