Dear Richard

Word's mail merge is driving me up the wall.  I am trying to understand IF statements, but all the sites (including Microsoft) seem as clear as mud.  In order to understand the statements, I need to see examples, but they are very thin on the ground.

I can understand them at a basic level, but as soon as nesting starts, then it becomes a nightmare.

What I really want to know how to do is this:  If I have an Excel spreadsheet with my list of names and I want to run a mail merge, how can I get Word to input either Dear Mr XX and in the absence of a surname, put in the the person's christian name, ie Dear Mark or Dear Chris, and then if the surname and christian name are missing put in either Dear Sir or Madam or To Whom it May Concern.

If you can help me with this I would be eternally grateful and hopefully I'll start to get my head around this methodology pretty soon.

Kind regards


Symn Waters
 

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Answer from Richard Rost:

Honestly, this is MUCH easier to set up in Excel and then just use the Excel field instead of trying to do IF functions in Word's mail merge. You could create a new column in Excel and then use IF to determine which to use.

Let's say you've got the person's first name in A1, you could say in B1:

=IF(A1="","Sir or Madam",A1)

That would put "Sir or Madam" in B1 if A1 is empty, otherwise, it would use A1.

You can find out more about the IF function here:

You can use the IF function to have Excel place a value in a cell based on one or more conditions or values in other cells.

See this FREE tutorial on my web site for more information on how to use the IF function:

http://www.599cd.com/tips/excel/misc/if-function-sales-tax.asp?key=BlFAlEx