suppress invalid merge field word 2003

My users had created several generic mail merge documents in Word 97, now we
have upgraded to Office 2003. Remember, these are generic mail merge
documents - not every field is used for every merge

On 97, if there mail merge field was not used for this particular merge, the
document printed fine. Now, on 2003, they receive an "invalid mail merge
field" error. Yes, they can get past it and everything prints fine, but it
is annoying.

Any suggestions on how to suppress this message?

Thanks,
Mike

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWlrZQ==?=,

My users had created several generic mail merge documents in Word 97, now we
have upgraded to Office 2003. Remember, these are generic mail merge
documents - not every field is used for every merge

On 97, if there mail merge field was not used for this particular merge, the
document printed fine. Now, on 2003, they receive an "invalid mail merge
field" error. Yes, they can get past it and everything prints fine, but it
is annoying.

Any suggestions on how to suppress this message?

When you say "not every merge field is used" what, more exactly, do you mean?

The fields are in the document and in the data source, but contain no data?

The fields are in the document, but not in the data source?

If the problem is the latter, then there's nothing you can do. The field is in
the merge document and Word will look for a corresponding field in the data
source. You'd have to make sure the data source contains all the fields, even
if the content is null (best is to pass an empty string).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

Cindy,

Thank you for the response, see below.

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" wrote:

When you say "not every merge field is used" what, more exactly, do you mean?

The fields are in the document and in the data source, but contain no data?

I believe this is the case - the fields are in the document and data source,
but they are null.

Thanks!

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWlrZQ==?=,

When you say "not every merge field is used" what, more exactly, do you mean?

the fields are in the document and data source,
but they are null.

What's the data source? Any chance you could pass an empty string "" rather than
null?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)