Conditionally Adding a Period in a Mail Merge

Rose uses Word's mail-merge feature to create certificates. The source data is in an Access database, and sometimes the middle initial pulled from the database has a period after the initial and sometimes it doesn't. Rose is wondering if there is a way, in Word, to have the mail merge check for the trailing period on the data in the middle initial field, and automatically add one if necessary.

Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with a way to do this. Word doesn't seem to have the capability to check for characters within the merged data on the fly. We did come up with a workaround, however. Open your merge document and, right after the merge field that inserts the middle initial, type a period. When you do your merge, some middle initials will have one period (if they had none in the data source) and others will have two (if they had one in the data source). All you then need to do is a search and replace operation, replacing all instances of two periods with a single period.

This may not be as "clean" as you desire; after all, it adds an extra step to your certificate preparation. It is easier, however, than manually going through the merged file and looking at each middle initial yourself.