Word Mail Merge from excel: How to stop 0s from Merging

Does it help if you format the fields as "text" in Excel in stead of "general".
Else fill them with a hard space (alt-0-1-6-0) as a work-around for not knowing how to use IF.

Dear Kees_B,

Yes I already tried format the fields as "text". That did not help.

Im confused by your "Else fill them with a hard space (alt-0-1-6-0) as a work-around for not knowing how to use IF."

I could try the IF...Then. I did try something I read in earlier post. It was code from 2007 post. Maybe it was not working with my 2010 version. It was pulling the entire code into my letter as plain text.... I did not even get a error. Hmmm??? My second excel sheet is pulling info from master excel. I even tried to put code in master excel sheet and that did not work either. But I dont remember what was happening.

If I had said "Put an X in these empty fields" would you have been confused?
If I had said "Put an ë (alt-1-3-7) in these empty fields" would you have been confused?
Then why are you confused if I say "Put a hard space (alt-0-1-6-0) in these empty fields"?

You know what an X is, you know what an ë is, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space tells what a hard space is.

OMG OMG if you were here I would HUG you.

Ive been working on this for days.

So the "hard space" worked. Yay! So simple. My employees will need to get used to spacing in every box which is fine. There are only a few.

I was confused by "(alt-0-1-6-0)". I did not know what that meant.

I am very grateful and appreciative for your help.
LAURA

Thank you for telling. I really appreciate that.

If you send me a PM (private mail) after clicking on my username Kees_B, then I know your e-mail adress and can send you mine. Then - if you send me such a spreadsheet and the mail-merge document - I'll have a look if I can make the IF working. I've got a vague idea I once (long ago) did something like that myself, but I forgot all about the details, so I couldn't explain it to you in a post on short notice. It's kind of real programming, so you don't need to blame yourself you couldn't get it right.

I'm a professional IT-guy, so you can trust I won't make unintended use of your data.

Will answer tonight (European time, that's afternoon in the USA).