I work in the Admissions office at Charles Wright Academy. We have been struggling on the use of nicknames in several different types of letters that we use.

For example. When we merge letters for applications received, mailing labels, etc we want BB to use the nickname if one is in placed in the Nickname field on Bio 1, and if not, to use the studeents first name.

We looked at using conditionals formulas in Word, but it looks like you can only get Word to pull portions of another document and not the data source that BB creates.

We want to know if anyone else has had this problem and if so, how did you solve it.

Juanita Braggs
Admissions Secretary
Charles Wright Academy

We use export to create an Excel document with nickname and first name. Then merge the letter with the excel document.

Ok, but how do you get Word to select the nickname, if there is one, or the first name if there isn't.

We use a conditions formula in Word - It looks like this: {If {nickname} <> "" "{nickname}" "{FirstName}"} Does that make sense? - Gail

That is EXACTLY what we have been looking for, but I am having a pit of a problem with the formula. I copied and pastd it into one of our documents, but when I close the document and try the mail merge, part of the formula appears in the document. Could you check the formula and resend it to me. Thanks! Juanita Braggs Admissions Secretary Charles Wright Academy

First, make sure you have the exact name of your fields in there (I used {nickname} as an example) Use the mail merge functions of insert merge fields to get the correct names - If this is all set, then after you do your merge, try hitting Alt + F9 to make sure you have the correct view. Let me know if you get it - Gail

Another option is to use the nickname field all the time, and to make sure that each record has a nickname entry...if no nickname, then I populate the nickname field with firstname via an import back to BB...from now on, all new records being entered have nickname required, and if a student doesn't have a nickname, then the data entry people put fname in it.