Field Mergeformat Switch

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Please – what is the purpose of the Mergeformat field, and what would happen if I got rid of it?

Mike

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Please – what is the purpose of the Mergeformat field, and what would happen if I got rid of it?

Word often adds the * MERGEFORMAT “switch” to fields you insert. This apparently forces the content of fields (whether generated, e.g., DATE) or copied (e.g., REF) to match the direct formatting you have applied to the field code, or the formatting of the underlying paragraph. Those in the know say that in most cases, you don’t really need it, so if it bothers you, go ahead and delete it. If you find that the alien formatting appears in some fields in your document, you can add the switch back, and re-apply the formatting you want.

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Word often adds the * MERGEFORMAT “switch” to fields you insert. This apparently forces the content of fields (whether generated, e.g., DATE) or copied (e.g., REF) to match the direct formatting you have applied to the field code, or the formatting of the underlying paragraph. Those in the know say that in most cases, you don’t really need it, so if it bothers you, go ahead and delete it. If you find that the alien formatting appears in some fields in your document, you can add the switch back, and re-apply the formatting you want.

I have a document in which we use an includetext field like this {INCLUDETEXT “spec project info.docx” projheader * MERGEFORMAT “} and what I am finding is that if the bookmarked text in “projheader” has more than 7 words (with 6 spaces) the last word of the bookmarked text and and subsequent text will not format correctly and looks like this “BASIC MATERIALS AND METHODS FOR PLUMBING WORK TG&W Engineers, Inc.”. Note that starting at the word “WORK” the text is no longer bold. If I edit the bookmarked text to have less spaces all the text is formatted correctly. Other documents with less words work correctly. I have tried adding * charformat switch and get the same result.
Any ideas on how to fix?

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Many thanks for quick reply – I now understand
Mike

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Have you tried deleting the * MERGEFORMAT switch, then refreshing the field?

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Yes, deleting the mergeformat switch yields the same result.
The mergeformat actually is needed because the linked text in the new location has to be a different format (smaller font size and bold).

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Try substituting * CHARFORMAT instead. Format the first word of the field code the way you want the field to display in your document.

More references: Fields in Microsoft Word

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Already tried that. Formatted the first character to italics and added the switch. The text up to that same last word changes to italics but the last word is not changed.

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You’d have a lot less trouble if the source and target documents used the same Styles – defined the same way, of course – and those Styles were used consistently.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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The formatting is dictated from outside of our office. Just seems weird that there is a word limit in an includetext.

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There is no meaningful limit on what can be imported via an INCLUDETEXT field (up to 512MB, actually, depending on what else you have in the target document). The formatting problems most likely stem from the misuse/abuse of Styles in the source and/or target documents.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Cross-posted at: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/includetext-formatting-issue/28f869e3-b810-4104-a352-7fba8d154dee
For cross-posting etiquette, please read: http://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?184

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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