Hi,

I hope somebody can help with this problem that has been infuriating me for hours!

I am creating a report that links to data within an excel document. The data needs to embed into the paragraphs and comes from complex sets of data, so I have decided to use the 'Paste Special - linked unformatted text' function to embed the data rather than use mail merge.



The problem I have is, whenever I update the data (select all, F9), Word decides to add random spaces after my fields. As you can see from my example screen shot (I have shaded the fields to make it more obvious), the number of spaces added is completely random, even when the field data (i.e. name) is the same each time.

I have also added the field code if this helps identify the problem.

Any help would be appreciated!

Chris.

Attached Images

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Hi Chris,

Rather than inserting so many linked fields, I'd suggest having only the first one, which you'd bookmark, then insert cross-references to that bookmark. At least then you'll have only one field to sort out any vagaries with. I'd also suggest deleting the '\* Mergeformat' switch from the fields and making sure there are no extraneous spaces in the source data.

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

Hi Macropod,

Many thanks for the swift reply. I took your advice on creating bookmarks and this made the problem much easier to manage!

I eventually found the source of the problem as I created more links in my document. I noticed that the phantom spacing issue only occured in a few fields. It turned out, that these were all fields linked to excel cells that were 'merged and centered'. I simply unmerged these cells, and Bingo Bango - no more random spacing! Document now works perfectly!

Many thanks again for you help!

Chris.

Hi Chris,
That is indeed an odd behaviour.

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