Removing blank lines from labels
1) First ensure that the label frames are showing the field contents (data source headings),
rather than their underlying field names. If this is not the case, then either press Ctrl+F9 or
choose View > Field Names to toggle the view.
2) Next, ensure that you can see non-printing characters, such as paragraph marks and line
breaks. If these are not already visible, choose View > Formatting Marks from the Menu
bar, or press Ctrl+F10, or click on the Formatting Marks icon on the Standard toolbar.
You will now see that address field separation is created by line breaks ( ), rather than
paragraphs ( ). The suppression of blank address fields depends on hiding paragraphs,
not lines, so you need to replace line breaks with paragraphs.
3) Click in the first label, at the end of the last data source address field in the first line of the
label. Press Delete to remove the new line character and then press Return (or the Enter
key) to insert a paragraph marker. Repeat this action for each line in the address.
If the line spacing in the first label is not satisfactory, you may wish to correct this before
proceeding, by modifying the paragraph style associated with the address. Unless you have
changed it, the address uses the Default style.
Caution
The objective of Step 3 is to replace all line breaks at the end of data source address
fields with paragraphs. Sometimes the address data field may be longer than the width
of the label and will wrap to the next physical line: make sure that you are not misled
by this into deleting and replacing anything other than line break characters.
4) Click again at the end of the first paragraph to be conditionally suppressed and then choose
Insert > Fields > More Fields. Select the Functions tab and then click on Hidden
Paragraph in the Type column. Now click in the Condition box and enter the details of the
condition that defines a blank address field. It has the general form of:
![Database.Table.Database field]
where the ‘!’ (NOT) character indicates the negative case and the square brackets indicate
the condition.
For example, in our Points database the condition to test if the Last Name field is empty
would be
![Points.Sheet1.Last Name] as illustrated in Figure 10.
To test for multiple conditions, use the operators AND and/or OR between the conditional
statements, for example:
![Points.Sheet1.Title]AND![Points.Sheet1.Last Name]
Click Insert, but do not close the dialog until all lines have been amended.
5) Repeat for each paragraph to be conditionally suppressed, remembering to place the
cursor at the end of the line before changing the last element of the condition and Inserting
the result.
Caution
The last paragraph of the label address block ends with a special field,
Next record:Database.Table (Next record:Points.Sheet1 in our
example); the Hidden paragraph field must be inserted before this field. This can
generally be accomplished by clicking at the end of the paragraph and then using the
Left Arrow key once to skip back over it. If you omitted this action, you will find that
some records have been skipped and are missing from the final output.
12 | Chapter 14 Mail Merge