Can't Merge Alphanumeric Data Correctly

Dave is having a problem getting data in an Excel worksheet to merge successfully into a Word document. The original Excel file had fields like Job Number and Truck Number. In the merge file he wanted the value of these fields to display unless the field was blank, in which case he wanted some underscore characters displayed. Dave used the following as his merge field:

{IF{MERGEFIELD Job_Number}="" "________" "{MERGEFIELD Job_Number}"}

When both the Job Number or Truck Number fields used the General format, and contained only digits, this worked fine; Dave got the numbers (or underlines when the field was blank). Then his data changed and he had job and truck numbers with alphanumeric characters. When doing the merge, the number 0 displayed in the merge in any place where the job or truck number contained alphanumerics. Thus, the merges now produced 0 in place of alphanumeric fields and Dave never got underlines; only numeric fields (or numeric fields formatted as Text) merge properly.

There are a couple of things Dave can try in this situation. The first is to modify, slightly, the merge field. If the merge is grabbing zero values instead of blanks, then you can change the test so it checks for zeroes, as shown here:

{IF{MERGEFIELD Job_Number}="0" "________" "{MERGEFIELD Job_Number}"}

Now, if Excel is really transferring zeroes in place of blank fields (or Word is interpreting blanks as zeroes), the test will be positive and you will get the underlines you want.

Another thing to check out is the formatting on the data that is being imported. Beginning with Word 2002 (well, with Office XP really), Microsoft changed which "end" of the merge pair was responsible for formatting. When merging from Excel, it used to be that Excel was responsible for formatting. Beginning with Office XP, the responsibility shifted to Word. This means that the complexity of the merge fields can increase dramatically in order to get the desired results.

A great resource on how to handle formatting in merge fields is found at this Web page:

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (312) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Can't Merge Alphanumeric Data Correctly.