Good morning, i am having lots of fun with mail merges these days. I am hoping for some assistance. I am re-building a dynamic letter for a project i am working on. What i am trying to do is imbed another dropdown box within a condition of an if statement. The issue is the drop down box just shows as text. I am unsure how to show it as the dropdown so the user can make their additional choice. Is this even possible? Here is the detail:



"We have recently received the enclosed {FORMDROPDOWN} (drop down is called Type) from you addressed to {FORMDROPDOWN}. {IF{TYPE} = "Cheque" ""We are unable to determine which policy name and number that these funds are to be deposited to. A postage paid envelope has been provided for you to return the cheque with the additional information." "Based on the information provided, we are unable to {FORMDROPDOWN} account. The correspondence is being returned for this reason".}

The 2nd condition is causing the issue. When the letter is open for use it just has the first option as text (which is select and tab). However, when i double click on it, it does bring up the drop down options. Is there something i am missing, or is this not doable?

Thanks!

The short answer is no. Dropdown formfields cannot be included in a mailmerge. There are macro-based workarounds, though (eg: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286841). Even then, you'll have the problem that every dropdown in the mailmerge output document will need a different bookmark name - and the corresponding REF field (you need to use {REF Type} not just {Type}) will also need to refer to that unique name, not simply to 'Type'.

Of course, if you create a 'Type' field and another field for the options in your second dropdown in your data source, you can output the conditional text as part of the mailmerge process, without needing either dropdown.

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

Never even thought of that Paul, i don't know why, it's certainly easier to put a reference to the field in. I will do that.

thanks for the advice!
Sean