Mail Merge Skips Some Records

[kmordecai]

I have used the following code to link Word Document to an Excel Spreadsheet
(so that the document will update with the most recent information from the
spreadsheet each time it is opened):

{IF {MERGEFIELD Program_Committee} = "X" "
Program Committee" ""} {IF { MERGEFIELD Program_Committee} = "Chair" "
Program Committee, Chair" ""}


The idea is that if the person on my list is a member of the Program
Committee, there is an "X" in the merged field from my spreadsheet, and
"Program Committee" is displayed in my document. (Otherwise, nothing is
displayed.) Likewise, if they are the Chair, the referenced cell contains the
word "Chair."

The system is generally working, with one major exception: If none of the
first nine rows of the spreadsheet contain an "X" or the word "Chair", Word
seems to stop "looking" for the X, and it returns a blank for all of the rest
of the records.

If I put an X in any of the first 9 rows, everything works perfectly.
Unfortunately, for one of my committees, none of the first 9 members of the
group (listed alphabetically) are members.

Why is my merge skipping these records? Any clever solutions?

 

[macropod]

Hi kmordecai,

The cause of the problem you're having is that Word queries the first 8 or so records to determine what kind of data each field has.
At a guess, I'd say the empty rows lead Word to conclude that the field is numeric. If you put some dummy text data in the first few
records, that should fix the problem. Provided you don't use either an 'X' or 'Chair', your existing field coding should still work.