Suppress Blank Lines in a mail merge

Anonymous

Using Word 2007, I am creating a mail merge. Some addresses have one line, some have two (Suite number, etc.) I want to suppress the second address field only if it is blank, so there are no blank lines in the document after I perform the merge. In older versions of Word, I remember a check box for "suppress blank fields" but I can't seem to find that in 2007.

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K MVP Volunteer Moderator

In general, blank lines are automatically suppressed, but only if they end in a paragraph break, not a line break. Consequently, the default is not a solution for me and perhaps not for you, either. So you have to use an IF field. Assuming your two address lines are the merge fields Address1 and Address2, you'd have something like this.

{ MERGEFIELD Address1 }<line break>

{ IF { MERGEFIELD Address2 } = "" "" "{MERGEFIELD ADDRESS2}<line break>" }

The way that will actually appear in your document is:

{ MERGEFIELD Address1 }

{ IF { MERGEFIELD Address2 } = "" "" "{MERGEFIELD ADDRESS2}

" }

By putting the line break inside the FalseText quotes, you ensure that thereis a line break only if the line contains text; otherwise, there will be no line.

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49 additional answers

Anonymous

2012-05-03T18:44:53+00:00

Thank you, but I followed your example step by step - and I still got blank lines - it did not work.

But, again, my question is (even if this is the correct procedure and I just did something wrong) WHY am I jumping through all of these "hoops" just to do something that seems to be common sense and USED to work automatically in an EARLIER version of Word???

Why not a simple question box with a checkmark: "Suppress Blank Lines?"

It's like going "backwards"! There's a lot I need to keep up with for my own job....it's amazing to me that Microsoft thinks I have the time to re-learn how to do things and "where" everything is in their new "so-called" updated versions!

I can't tell you how much I used to be a "wiz" at how to do everything in 2003 - now I feel as if I've almost never used MS before because they have to radically change everything. Change is good, but only if it makes things easier/better!

This is going "backwards"!
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Anonymous

2011-12-03T16:34:34+00:00

The downside of using Address Block to solve this problem caused by Word 2007 is that addresses in UK sometimes have 3 lines

So my options are to have missing address details - not a good idea

or to have have blank lines - which look silly

I'd appreciate any advice on this problem
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Anonymous

2011-11-15T18:16:30+00:00

Thank you again for your help. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "This field you then copy to each label" When I click on "Address Block" a window pops up giving me a preview of the first record. There are arrows both ways to preview the next (last) record. What was it that you meant I was supposed to "copy"?
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Anonymous

2011-11-15T14:14:44+00:00

John,

Thank you for the tip. My issue was making multiple address labels to put onto envelopes, not printing on envelopes themselves.

This is merged with an excel file that contains the data and then printed on a sheet of address labels.

Do you know if the "address box" works in that situation? It seems like you would have to go thru each address on the label individually and "edit" it for blank spaces.

My goal was to just not have the blank line appear at all after it was merged (like it used to in Word 2003) if there was no data in that field. In Word 2003 it used to automatically do this.

They've messed this up (as well as ALL the spacing) in Word 2010.
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