Problem filtering in mail merge.

[tomcon]

I have a problem trying to use multiple criteria to filter on.

This seems purely like a bug or random behavior, and not a usage issue, but please tell me if this is known or what i would need to do.

I filtered on a field, SendNow=1. Fine, i got 566 reciepients.
I then added AND Field=Bounced, criteria = IsBlank.

But, instead of getting fewer recipients, in fact, at that point, all rows were selected.

So, i looked at the dialog again, and it had simply added an extra criteria, and extra "OR" criteria that ended up selecting all the records. And, this is reproducible, happens every time i try to say OK to the dialog, i can't seem to prevent it.

When i click OK, what is added is an additional critera, with "OR", and Field-Bounced=IsBlank is added again.

So, when i thought i had


SendNow=1
AND Bounced IsBlank (and then hit OK in the dialog)

what the dialog had (when i opened it again) is
SendNow=1
AND Bounced IsBlank
OR Bounced IsBlank

That is, it simply added an extra criteria as "OR Bounced IsBlank". Of course the last set will select all records.

each time i simply open the filter dialog and click OK, an extra criteria
"OR Bounced IsBlank". I've gotten it up to like 10 times in the dialog, just by opening and saying "OK". Aside from the fun, this is is a big problem. I can't make the dialog stop at just two criteria:
SendNow=1
AND Bounced IsBlank

Am i crazy? Has this been seen? How do i get ONLY the above 2 criteria to be used. Every time i say OK to the dialog, i am back to all the rows being selected, no filter at all.

Yikes, help!

Thanks
tom

[macropod]

Hi Tom,

It seems there's a Word bug that adds the unwanted 'OR IsBlank' filter.

A simple enough workaround is to not use the filter and, instead, use a SKIPIF field in the mailmerge main document. you'd code it along the lines of:
{SKIPIF «Bounced» = ""}

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.

[petera180]

Hi

I've got exactly the same problem as Tom, but I'm merging from an Excel 2010 worksheet, so I can't use the {SKIPIF} field in the source document.

Is there a fix for this ridiculous problem yet, please?

Regards


Peter

[macropod]

Hi Peter,

The Word/Excel version does not affect whether you can use a SKIPIF field. Indeed, the issue addressed in this thread for which SKIPIF is a suggested solution concerns Office 2010.

[petera180]

Hi, Paul

Thank you for your help in pointing this out. I need to check out where to place the {SKIPIF} field in order to modify the merge, as I thought there was a problem with using {SKIPIF} with {NEXT} fields - although this was some time ago.

Regards


Peter

[macropod]

Ordinarily, it would be the first item in the document.