Orphan problem with formletters...?

[Kenneth]

Howdy,

I run Word 2000...

We have a bunch of automated processes that print documents
by dumping data to a txt file and then using Word's merge
functionality.

It works (close to) perfectly.

But, today, I used this automated process to print a welcome
letter for a program participant and I noticed an "orphan"
problem. The last lines of the letter look like this:

....on Thursday, December 1, 2005, at
8:30am. We will close at 5:00pm on December
2.

I checked to see if widow and orphan control was enabled,
and it is.

This presents a bit of a puzzle:

If I adjust the margins to accommodate the lone character, I
may very well find the problem with another form letter at a
later time because the length of the text varies depending
on the actual dates entered from our database.

Might you suggest another approach?

Very sincere thanks,

 

[Jay Freedman]

The problem you have isn't what "widow and orphan control" is about. That's
concerned only with whether a page break is permitted just after the first
line of a paragraph or just before the last line of a paragraph. It doesn't
control the position of line breaks at all.

What you need is a nonbreaking space (entered on the keyboard with
Ctrl+Shift+spacebar) instead of an ordinary space character between the
month and the day number. I don't think there's any way to make this part of
a mail merge from a plain-text source. Instead, you'll have to arrange to
run a Replace operation on the completed form letters, looking for a month
name followed by a space and replacing it with the month name and a
nonbreaking space. That would be an excellent candidate for a macro, because
you'll need 12 separate Replace operations to catch all the months.

 

[Kenneth]

The problem you have isn't what "widow and orphan control" is about. That's
concerned only with whether a page break is permitted just after the first
line of a paragraph or just before the last line of a paragraph. It doesn't
control the position of line breaks at all.

What you need is a nonbreaking space (entered on the keyboard with
Ctrl+Shift+spacebar) instead of an ordinary space character between the
month and the day number. I don't think there's any way to make this part of
a mail merge from a plain-text source. Instead, you'll have to arrange to
run a Replace operation on the completed form letters, looking for a month
name followed by a space and replacing it with the month name and a
nonbreaking space. That would be an excellent candidate for a macro, because
you'll need 12 separate Replace operations to catch all the months.

Hi Jay,

Please accept my thanks for your interesting comments...

Might you know if the "non-breaking" space used by Word is
available as a particular ASCII character? I ask because if
it were, I could just have the text file(s) incorporate it
in each of the dates.

Thanks again,

 

[Tony Jollans]

The non breaking space is ANSI character 160.

Depending, perhaps, on the exact format of your dates (whether or not the
MailMerge recognises them) you may be able to add a format to the merge
field ...

{ MERGEFIELD "YourDate" \@ "MMMM*d" }

(where the asterisk represents a hard space (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) - and the
braces are as created by Word for the mergefield. If you dont see the
mergefields looking like this, press Alt+F9 to toggle the field view.)

 

[Kenneth]

The non breaking space is ANSI character 160.

Depending, perhaps, on the exact format of your dates (whether or not the
MailMerge recognises them) you may be able to add a format to the merge
field ...

{ MERGEFIELD "YourDate" \@ "MMMM*d" }

(where the asterisk represents a hard space (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) - and the
braces are as created by Word for the mergefield. If you dont see the
mergefields looking like this, press Alt+F9 to toggle the field view.)

Hi Tony,

I appreciate your suggestion, but in my situation it might
be easier if I just had my database write the dates with the
ANSI 160 included. I will experiment with that approach.

Sincere thanks,