Supressing Blank Lines in a Word 2007 Mail Merge

Posted by: Administrator on: January 11 2008 • Categorized in: Office 2007,Word
  • In earlier versions of Word, you were easily able to suppress the blank lines in a mail merge. In Word 2007, it does not seem to automatically do this.Say for example, you have a data file with Address 1, Address 2, and Address 3. When you add the fields to your merge document, they look something like this:

    «Address 1»
    «Address 2»
    «Address 3»
    «City», «State» «Zip»

    When you do the merge, if a record does not have a second or third address line, the result is something like this:

    101 East Street

    Anytown, US 12345

    Rather than what you want:

    101 East Street
    Anytown, US 12345

    The problem is that the default Normal style adds 10 pts of space between two paragraphs. When Word encounters a blank line with a space after value in a mail merge, it keeps the paragraph mark. The solution is to format the address fields with a style that does not place a space after each paragraph:

    1. You could use the Word 2003 style set. (Change Styles | Style Set in the Styles group on the Home tab.)
    2. You could create a new style called something like Normal No Space and format it to have 0 pt Spacing After each paragraph.
    3. You could also use the Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style checkbox in the Paragraph dialog. Make sure to select only the list or this option will change the style for your entire document. (Paragraph dialog in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.)
    4. You could format the address lines and manually specify 0 pt Spacing After each paragraph. (Paragraph dialog in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.)

    This shouldn’t be happening, but at least there is a solution.

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    Comments: 4 Comments

    4 Responses to “Supressing Blank Lines in a Word 2007 Mail Merge”

    1. chapbell says:
      February 5, 2008 at 3:59 pm

      I could not get this to work for me, perhaps because I dislike the 2007 styles so much, that I’ve set it to default to the 2003 style.

      However, the address block button on the mailings ribbon seems to accomplish the same thing.

      Love Ocadia, but it wasn’t compatible with the newest version of WP. I miss it.

    2. Administrator says:
      February 5, 2008 at 6:09 pm

      Even the address block add the 10pt of extra space. The easiest fix I’ve found is to select the three or four address lines and using Home | Paragraph, check the Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style checkbox.

      It is a pain in the rear, but the fix does work.

    3. Alan Fischer says:
      September 21, 2010 at 3:45 pm

      None of these methods work. Microsoft is idiotic.

    4. Don says:
      October 9, 2010 at 11:26 am

      Alan–not sure what you are doing. If you add an address block to a mail merge, select it and format it using the Paragraph dialog’s No Space between paragraphs of the same style, it works. Envelopes don’t use the Normal 10pt After spacing, but if they do, you can easily format them in the same way.

      I agree that MS’ decision to base everything on styles (a la CSS) is overkill (and confusing) for the majority of users, I have been using styles since WordPerfect 5.1, and for serious production work, they are essential.

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