Suppress Blank Lines in a mail merge

Ahh yes, in improving the function, they made it harder. :-)

Thanks for the tip...this will help. I'm actually building a church directory, where some families have no children, and others have several. I'm using Excel for the data, and Word for the layout, so this will come in handy.

Thanks again,

Michael

"In general, blank lines are automatically suppressed, but only if they end in a paragraph break, not a line break. "

NOT TRUE!!!!

Yes, this USED to work in Word 2003 - but does NOT in Word 2010!

They've really messed up ALL the line spacing throughout Word 2010 - it DEFAULTS to HTML spacing!

Instead of all that junk up above to make it "suppress blank lines" why not a simple Check Box or something that says "Suppress Blank Lines"?

Why are they making things MORE difficult?

This is a different issue. If you need to change line spacing in a paragraph, you need to do so through the Paragraph dialog. Alternatively, there is a Line and Paragraph Spacing button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab and a Paragraph Spacing menu accessed via the Change Styles button in the Styles group.

All versions of Word beginning with Word 2000 have defaulted to HTML paragraph spacing (a Compatibility Option setting), but that applies only to treatment of Spacing Before and After. What you are describing, I think, is the default paragraph spacing of the Normal style in Word 2007 and 2010, which is 1.15 line spacing, plus 10 points Spacing After. You do not need to use this; you can change the paragraph spacing and set the change as the default; you can even revert to Word 2003 styles entirely using Change Styles.

But none of this has anything to do with how mail merge handles blank lines.

I've been using Mail Merge in Word 2003 for years.

This occurs when making Labels to stick on envelopes for mailing.

If you Merge it with an Excel File which contains a list of addresses (one column being "Address 1" and another "Address 2") -- some people will not have any data in the column "Address 2".

So it will/should merge like this Example:

Bob Smith

123 Main Street

Smallville, NY 12345

Others WILL have data in the "Address 2" column and it will merge like this:

Mary Jones

Pennville Village

321 Oak Lane

Smallville, NY 12345

However, Word 2010 will Merge the first example WITHOUT suppressing the blank field (empty line) so it shows up like this after being merged:

Bob Smith

123 Main Street

Smallville, NY 12345

You are right, I had to "revert" back to Word 2003 for this to Merge correctly - which is ridiculous - WHY install Word 2010 if you have to "revert" back to a previous version for something to work CORRECTLY? Why not simply have an option (check box) that says "suppress blank fields"?

The whole "DEFAULT" to "html spacing" is ridiculous throughout all of Word 2010! 

I'm not setting up a webpage - I'm typing a business letter/important documents. 

If I WANT an extra line inserted, I'll INSERT one.

Had my company not recently installed Word 2010 on our computers, I would have stuck to Word 2003.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not opposed to changing things to make them better, more efficient.  What I don't understand is they change them to a point where you have to learn everything all over again!

I've been using Word & Excel for years and know hundreds of tricks and short cuts – but because everything is so different and in different places, I have to re-learn how to do it or figure out WHERE it is!  I have enough work as it is for my job – besides having to re-learn everything again for Microsoft! (unless Microsoft wants to cut me a paycheck!)

Things/short-cuts that made me more productive, are now in different places, and I have become less productive.

I just don't get it.  Making things easier – yes; but changing them so I don't recognize it anymore?

The Toolbars were great – everything I needed was right there in front of me…now I find myself searching among the tabs of the ribbon just to find basic things….yes, I know I can "customize" the ribbon, but that only puts more tabs up there.

I'm working harder using something that supposedly was going to make things "better".