Mail merges are a great way to save time, since they pull information from the same fields, over and over again with each new record in your database. There’s only one problem—all records aren’t created equal; they don’t all have, or all need, the same fields. This article solves that perpetual problem with labels. If you’re already familiar with the problem, you can go straight to the solution entitled: Suppressing blank lines with sections step by step.

The problem of blank [Address2] lines

Some people live in houses; some in apartments. Some work in enormous campuses with mailstops or buildings in the address; others receive their work mail at a post office box.

Everyone knows this, of course. So why is this worth mentioning? Because it affects how you do mail merges when you send mail to these people. You’ll need all the relevant information for their addresses to print out on labels, or in the header of form letters. You want them to look like figure 1.

Figure 1: Standard mail merge layout

Some have a second line for the address; some don’t. That’s just the way that addresses are. This is reflected, of course, in the database. You create your database and, for each person, fill in the Firstname, Lastname, Address1, Address2, City, State, and Zip fields as appropriate. If there is no value for the Address2 field, you leave it blank.

So far so good.

Figure 2 shows what the labels template looks like when you set up your mail merge.

Figure 2: Labels setup

However, this is how your labels will look when they come out of the printer. And, while the post office certainly will deliver letters and packages addressed like this, it does look kind of goofy. (Think how much goofier if you had three address lines in your database.) See figure 3.

Figure 3: Printed version of labels with variable addresses

Nothing shows up where the empty Address2 value is. At least OpenOffice.org hides the empty Address2 field. That’s good. But OpenOffice.org doesn’t hide the empty carriage return, the empty line reserved for that field. That’s the problem: the carriage return is still there.

The solution to the blank address line issue

Anyone who’s researched how to suppress the blank Address2 line knows it’s a frustrating process. There are some solutions, but they don’t work that well, or they’re complicated, or they only work for letters, not labels. I haven’t tried them all but I concluded from the comments on various forums that we, as OpenOffice.org users, have not yet reached the promised land for this issue.

Here are two solutions. The first one is okay if you’re already using the mail merge wizard. The second one works under any circumstances for any templates.

An adequate solution for suppressing empty lines

Choose Tools→Mail Merge Wizard. In window 3, you’ll see this section (shown in figure 4) that lets you suppress any blank lines in the address block.

Figure 4: Mail merge wizard with the option to suppress blank lines

However, there are two disadvantages: 1) this is a very complicated, yet powerful, wizard; and, 2) it only works for letters, not labels.

The other solution is more elegant and simpler, if not blindingly easy. And once you’ve done it once, it’s very easy to repeat.

Overview of the best way to suppress any blank line

When I say “the best way”, that is of course my own opinion. But I think once you do it, you’ll see it’s reasonably slick. You can also use it for dozens of other purposes.

The key thing, remember, is to suppress the carriage return that’s associated with the empty field, not the empty field itself. The field is empty so it’s not going to show up, period.

You need to hide the carriage return after the <Address2> field IF the <Address2> field is empty.

I have tried to do this with the Fields window but couldn’t find a way to express a carriage return.

My solution is to use sections, as shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: Sections