Conditional Mail merge appears with double spacing all across the document

Darren Mooten

Hi everyone In the past month we have been having problems with recently added letters added in a conditional mail merge, the initial template is perfectly fine (spacing is set to 0 pt before and after, also paragraphs line spacing is set to single. However when i run the merge the recently added letters appear all over the place from head to toe - every two to three sentences are spaced out making a one page letter becomes one page and a half. When i run the letter individually from a persons record directly from gift it works fine. Spoke to Blackbaud and they don't have a clue also. Any help or pointers would be great.

Teddi Taylor

Darren Mooten:
Hi everyone In the past month we have been having problems with recently added letters added in a conditional mail merge, the initial template is perfectly fine (spacing is set to 0 pt before and after, also paragraphs line spacing is set to single. However when i run the merge the recently added letters appear all over the place from head to toe - every two to three sentences are spaced out making a one page letter becomes one page and a half. When i run the letter individually from a persons record directly from gift it works fine. Spoke to Blackbaud and they don't have a clue also. Any help or pointers would be great.

I know this is an old post, but it had no replies, so I thought I would chime in. We had some formatting issues, but mostly related to changing the font size on us.

I would try a couple things. Make sure your default paragraph settings in Word are not set to double-space. And update all your defaults (fonts, etc) to how you would like them to appear in your merges.

 Next, you will probably have to re-do all your letters in the conditional merge (copy & paste them to a new Word document before moving them back to the merge). I think it has something to do with the docx/doc switch & the RE update, but it's just a guess. We found that the new letters we created did not change the formatting, but the old ones we were using had the strange formatting issues.

 

Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE

Teddi Taylor:

I know this is an old post, but it had no replies, so I thought I would chime in. We had some formatting issues, but mostly related to changing the font size on us.

I would try a couple things. Make sure your default paragraph settings in Word are not set to double-space. And update all your defaults (fonts, etc) to how you would like them to appear in your merges.

 Next, you will probably have to re-do all your letters in the conditional merge (copy & paste them to a new Word document before moving them back to the merge). I think it has something to do with the docx/doc switch & the RE update, but it's just a guess. We found that the new letters we created did not change the formatting, but the old ones we were using had the strange formatting issues.

 

No idea if this is still the case but we had similar issues a long time ago and it was because the mail merge uses the formatting of the first letter in the set up and applies it to all of the letters in the same Mail function/run.  Again, not sure if this is still the case but it sounds like it could be what is happening here.

Margaret Whitaker

Josh Bekerman:

No idea if this is still the case but we had similar issues a long time ago and it was because the mail merge uses the formatting of the first letter in the set up and applies it to all of the letters in the same Mail function/run.  Again, not sure if this is still the case but it sounds like it could be what is happening here.

I have spent all day playing with our conditional mail merge templates:  The first letter in the run merges beautifully, and one would think the following letters would follow suit (formatting wise but alas...I reset the margins, ensured that fonts are the same in all templates, etc etc and I still have formatting problems with some of the final merged documents.  Any ideas???

JoAnn Strommen

Margaret Whitaker:

I have spent all day playing with our conditional mail merge templates:  The first letter in the run merges beautifully, and one would think the following letters would follow suit (formatting wise but alas...I reset the margins, ensured that fonts are the same in all templates, etc etc and I still have formatting problems with some of the final merged documents.  Any ideas???

There are a number of knowledgebase solutions on "merged documents are double spaced".  Seems to have been a common issue with Word 2007.  Issue Josh referenced in post above yours about first document is addressed in 10th solution listed in my search. 

If you don't find help in Knowledgebase I'd contact for support for a problem like this.

Gina Gerhard

Margaret Whitaker:

I have spent all day playing with our conditional mail merge templates:  The first letter in the run merges beautifully, and one would think the following letters would follow suit (formatting wise but alas...I reset the margins, ensured that fonts are the same in all templates, etc etc and I still have formatting problems with some of the final merged documents.  Any ideas???

Just a thought, have you checked the line spacing and space before/after paragraph settings?

Margaret Whitaker

JoAnn Strommen:

There are a number of knowledgebase solutions on "merged documents are double spaced".  Seems to have been a common issue with Word 2007.  Issue Josh referenced in post above yours about first document is addressed in 10th solution listed in my search. 

If you don't find help in Knowledgebase I'd contact for support for a problem like this.

We use Word 2010 and the font formatting is the worst offender on some of the templates.  They stubbornly convert to Times New Roman 12 (the template is set for Calibri 11, which is our new company required font).  Does it cover this?