Why do Zeros appear?

I am using Word 2002 and an Excel 2002 spreadsheet to produce mailing labels. If there is no data in a field I get a 0 appearing in the merged doucment. In my fields for post codes, if I have, say, a country's name typed there instead of a post code, then this does not appear in the merged document at all. I must say I have been using mail merges for the past 15 years and find this version is one of the most frustrating and limiting ever produced.
A similar problem occured when I was using mail merge to produce a directory and got a 0 at the end of every set of records which I then had to remove using "search and replace" - a waste of my precious time!
I would really appreciate some help with this. Thanks

Microsoft has changed the way a merge document connects to its data - see
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_lab...th_word_xp.htm which should put
you back on track.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word




Lesley W wrote:
I am using Word 2002 and an Excel 2002 spreadsheet to produce mailing
labels. If there is no data in a field I get a 0 appearing in the
merged doucment. In my fields for post codes, if I have, say, a
country's name typed there instead of a post code, then this does not
appear in the merged document at all. I must say I have been using
mail merges for the past 15 years and find this version is one of the
most frustrating and limiting ever produced. A similar problem
occured when I was using mail merge to produce a directory and got a
0 at the end of every set of records which I then had to remove using
"search and replace" - a waste of my precious time!
I would really appreciate some help with this. Thanks

Thank you - I can now get my mail merges to work properly! Another question if I may - with a directory, how can I prevent a set of records from splitting over onto the next page? I s there some way of formatting so that if this is going to happen the entire record (the largest in this instance was 5 lines) will automatically move to the next page? Sort of like paragraph widow/ophans I guess?

If the merge fields are all in a single paragraph, format that paragraph in
the mail merge main document so that the lines are kept together. If they
are in multiple paragraphs, format all but the last one so that the
paragraphs a kept with the next.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Lesley W" wrote in message
news
Thank you - I can now get my mail merges to work properly! Another
question if I may - with a directory, how can I prevent a set of records
from splitting over onto the next page? I s there some way of formatting so
that if this is going to happen the entire record (the largest in this
instance was 5 lines) will automatically move to the next page? Sort of like
paragraph widow/ophans I guess?