Pitney Bowes DocuMatch Integrated Mail System Application Notes page 20

DocuMatch Application Notes
Setting Up and Running Merges with MS Word for Windows,
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file. For example, one common format is to enclose the
field data in double quotes, separate fields with com-
mas, and mark the end of each record with a carriage
return/line feed pair. You may be able to find out the
format of your data from the supplier of the data or the
other application, or if necessary, you can use Word,
Notepad, or a text editor or file-dumping utility to
analyze the data.
• Make sure there are no control characters such as
escape sequences in the merge data. These can inter-
fere with the formatting of your file when you perform
the merge.
• Also check to make sure there are no blank lines or
extraneous characters at the end of the file. This will
generate errors on the last record when you do the
merge.
A word of caution: many text editors (such as the DOS
EDIT program) change the control characters in a file
without warning: tabs may be converted to spaces,
linefeeds to carriage return/linefeeds, etc. You can use
these to examine files, but be very careful about making
changes or saving over original copies.
In Word for Windows Version 6, there are some limitations
on the format of text files which are outlined on pages 682-
3 of the Microsoft Word Users Guide. If the field data is
enclosed in quotes, make sure the file is saved as a text file
and not a Word document, because Word's "smart quote"
characters are not recognized as quotation marks for
merging.
In Word 97, the converter for TXT files assumes that the file
is comma delimited. If your file uses a different delimiter,
such as TAB, you may need to rename the file with an
extension other than TXT, or open it in Word and save it as
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