Losing Formatting in Merge

I have found that Word (365 license) is not suppressing lines when the field is blank. I have been using a switch (\\f) that has worked for me for about a year. It specifies that the text to be inserted following the merge field if the field is not blank.

A sample merge field with this looks like this:
(for anyone new to this: copying and pasting this will not work as you need to use ctrl F9 to insert the brackets for a merge field)

{ MERGEFIELD CnAdrPrf_Addrline3 \\f"¶
"}

Hope this helps and I'd love to know if there are easier solutions (always) – however, @Chris Snow it sounds like your issue may be different.

I am still having problems with Word adding the /MERGEFORMAT field after changing it to /*CHARFORMAT. On top of that, CHARFORMAT is removing all of the formatting, so none of my fields are retaining any special formatting at all. All of my emphasis and italics formatting is removed when I use CHARFORMAT, but MERGEFORMAT gives me inconsistent formatting, bolding things that are not supposed to be bolded at all.

I read this on FB and they said it worked. Im going to try it.

make sure the template and the letters all have the same "style," and in the merge if-then-else, do NOT select keep formatting.

I tried @Patti Posey ‘s suggestion of unchecking ’preserve formatting during updates' when editing the field inside the {brackets}. So far, it seems to have worked. My bolds are bold, my italics are italic, and my soul is at ease…….for now. ?

Austen Brown:

After successfully making it through this process and building a Multi-Conditional Merge, here is what I have found that works to keep formatting.

• Before starting anything, edit the “Normal” Theme for your word documents, and make sure to select “New documents based on this template”
• If MERGEFORMAT or CHARFORMAT are included in your conditional statements, remove them. I found these prevented the formatting in my templates from appearing in the final merge doc (formatting = bold and italics).

I second this recommendation! I was having formatting issues as well until I changed the “normal” format setting to the correct formats.

I am so thankful for all the responses to this delimma! After months of cleaning up merged acknowledgement letters one-by-one, I finally got fed up enough to really troubleshoot and resolve this. For me, unchecking the “preserve formatting during updates” box worked. I found that doing this also automatically removed the /MERGEFORMAT code from each condition. And I didn't need to redo the master conditional merge document. Just clicked on each letter setup in the document, right-clicked to ‘edit field’, and unchecked the box. Now my letters have merged with all of my templates' formatting intact. I am thrilled!