I think you described it exactly. I was having some trouble with other formats. Can't remember just what it was, but I tried rtf as an experiment and all the little bugs went away, or at least at first. I've never used them before and didn't notice this mailmerge issue. I hadn't tried to automate a mailmerge in a number of years. I'm not wed to any particular format, just whatever works. I'll take a look next week.
Thanks,Paul