MACWORD: How Mail Merge Fields Are Converted Between MacWord and WinWord (95193)

SUMMARY

Word for the Macintosh documents that contain mail merge fields may not be correctly converted to the Microsoft Word for Windows file format unless the following conditions exist:

The Windows Win.ini file contains the following entry:
[MacWordConv]
ConvertMerge=yes

For more information on setting the ConvertMerge option in Word versions 6.0 and later, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

172498 WD: Information About the EditConversionOptions Macro

The Word for the Macintosh document is saved in Normal format.
The Word for the Macintosh file converter is installed in Word for Windows.

MORE INFORMATION

Merge field information in a Word for Windows document can be viewed as follows.

Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 7.0, and 97

On the Tools menu, click Options.
Select the View tab.
Click to select the Field Codes check box, and click OK.

Word for Windows 2.0

On the View menu, click Field Codes.

Word for Windows 1.x

On the Edit menu, click Preferences.
In the Preferences dialog box, select Field Codes.

The following fields, commonly used in mail merge main documents, convert successfully from Word for the Macintosh to Word for Windows file format:

ASK
SET
NEXT

Other Word for Windows Mail Merge Considerations

You must use the Mail Merge command to reattach the data document.

Word 6.x, 7.x, 97: On the Tools menu, click Mail Merge, click Get Data and then select the data document in the Get Data dialog box.

Word 1.x, 2.x: On the File menu, click Print Merge, click Attach Data File, and then select the data document from the list box.
You must modify IF-ENDIF statements for use in Word for Windows. For example, a Word for the Macintosh IF-ENDIF statement used to suppress blank lines converts to the following in Word for Windows:
```
      {if street "{ref street}
      "} {ref city}, {ref state}  {ref zip}
						
```
To use the above field in Word for Windows, you must change it to the following:
```
      {if {address} <> "" "{address}
      "} {city}  {state}  {zip}
						
```
Since the main and data documents have been moved to a new machine, INCLUDE statements have to be redefined to have the proper path to documents you want to include in the merge.
In Word 6.x, 7.x, 97: Addition, multiplication and subtraction formulas used in fields, are converted to calculation fields.

For example: {={mergefield fieldname}+10 \* Mergeformat}
Although Word for the Macintosh allows spaces in the field names, Word for Windows does not. Avoid spaces in field names of the main and data documents if you plan to convert them to Word for Windows. Also, when converting to Word for Windows, use field names that are 32 characters or fewer.