Adding Wingdings before field

I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each field, but
that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this forum, but
nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle into excel as well with
no luck. I am hoping this is possible

I don't know how relevant this is to the mac version but in theory

{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Put the Wingding here { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" "Text you want to insert if missing"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




Yookaroo wrote:
I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each
field, but that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this
forum, but nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle into
excel as well with no luck. I am hoping this is possible

Most of the replies in this forum are probably only tested on Windows
versions of Word.

Mac versions of Word differ from Word versions in several respects (even
though they share the file formats .doc, .rtf, and .docx). Recent
versions of Mac Word and Mac Office have been "diverging" - i.e. they
have some features that Windows Word does not have, and lack some
features that Windows Word has. For example...
a. Mostly "ordinary" fields work the same way, but some do not, and
Mac has some "extras".
b. Mac Word does not have the Mailmerge events, so VBA Events examples
will not work
c. Mac Word 2008 does not have VBA, so anything that relies on VBA
will not work, e.g. "Online Forms" that use the forms fields /and/
require VBA, MACROBUTTONs that require VBA (I am not even sure that
regular MACROBUTTONs work)
d. recent Mac Word only has one connection method when connecting to
Excel data. It uses a converter - the interface looks rather like the
DDE one that is often mentioned here, but allows access to all the
sheets in th workbook. Mac Word does not use DDE or OLE DB. Mac Word
2004 and 2008 cannot use ODBC (although Excel can use it)
e. Mac Word does not have the \b or \f switches in MERGEFIELD fields.
(Even Windows Word has them from Word XP/2002 onwards).

I guess that means that you either have to use an { IF } field
construction to do this, or you have to add the Wingding in your data
source in such a way that it "gets through" to Word.

For the { IF } field you would need something like

{ IF { MERGEFIELD myfield } = "" "" "wingding{ MERGEFIELD myfield }" }

where you insert a wingding character where I have written wingding

Unfortunately, although Word 2008 will display Wingding characters
inserted into an Excel cell manually, if you insert them using a
worksheet formula such as
="thewingding" & B2
then in Word you see a _ character instead of thewingding

There might be some other way around this in Excel, but if you want to
use Excel formulas to create columns that have the thewingding
character in them, at the moment the only way I can see is to copy/paste
the Excel data into Word and use that as the data source.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Yookaroo wrote:
I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each field, but
that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this forum, but
nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle into excel as well with
no luck. I am hoping this is possible

Ok so I updated all my fields with
{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Wingding { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" ""}

This works for most records, but on some where there are many empty records,
any time I used more than just the wingding like* enter text here) the text
doesnt show before my field, just my field?



"Graham Mayor" wrote:

I don't know how relevant this is to the mac version but in theory

{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Put the Wingding here { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" "Text you want to insert if missing"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




Yookaroo wrote:
I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each
field, but that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this
forum, but nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle into
excel as well with no luck. I am hoping this is possible

Show us the exact field construction that you are using?

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
"Yookaroo" wrote in message
...
Ok so I updated all my fields with
{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Wingding { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" ""}

This works for most records, but on some where there are many empty
records,
any time I used more than just the wingding like* enter text here) the
text
doesnt show before my field, just my field?



"Graham Mayor" wrote:

I don't know how relevant this is to the mac version but in theory

{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Put the Wingding here { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" "Text you want to insert if missing"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




Yookaroo wrote:
I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each
field, but that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this
forum, but nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle into
excel as well with no luck. I am hoping this is possible

The field construction shown puts the wingding entered into it before the
field when the field has content. When the field is empty it displays
nothing. If you want it to display something for an empty field insert that
something between the final pair of quotes thus:
{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Wingding { MERGEFIELD product_41}" "Put
your empty field text here"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Yookaroo wrote:
Ok so I updated all my fields with
{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Wingding { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" ""}

This works for most records, but on some where there are many empty
records, any time I used more than just the wingding like* enter
text here) the text doesnt show before my field, just my field?



"Graham Mayor" wrote:

I don't know how relevant this is to the mac version but in theory

{IF {Mergefield product_41} "" "Put the Wingding here { MERGEFIELD
product_41}" "Text you want to insert if missing"}

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




Yookaroo wrote:
I need to add a wingding (the circle with the shadow) before each
field, but that wont show up if the field isnt there.

I read it was something like this
{ MERGEFIELD product_41 \b text I want to insert }

I am on a mac and I have cut and pasted several answers from this
forum, but nothing seems to work, I have tried adding the circle
into excel as well with no luck. I am hoping this is possible