Word Field Codes - SET, REF and SEQ

Problem

One of our Clients recently had a Word document within which they wanted some headings to be conditional based upon data from their Accounts/Contact Management Solution (CMS).

As an example these were the headings they wanted:

 

1.    Red- Fixed Heading (Always 1)

2.    Green – Conditional Heading

e.g. {IF { MERGE FIELD FROM CMS}  = "1" "Green"  "—No Heading--"  \* MERGEFORMAT}

3.    Black – Conditional Heading

e.g. {IF { MERGE FIELD FROM CMS }  = "1" "Black"  "—No Heading--"  \* MERGEFORMAT}

4.    Blue - Fixed Heading

If Items 2 and 3 aren’t in place Blue should be numbered 2.

Resolution

The first thing I tried was the SEQ field code, but what I found was the SEQ field behaved strangely within the IF Statement (Probably due to the timings of loading the data).

I did however find a solution using SET and REF:

At the beginning of the document I created a SET field

{SET numb 0} – To create a variable of 0

Within the document I then created the headings as follows:

{SET numb {=numb + 1}} {Ref numb}Red

{IF { MERGE FIELD FROM CMS}  = "1" “{SET numb {=numb + 1}} {Ref numb} Green” “”}

{IF { MERGE FIELD FROM CMS}  = "1" “{SET numb {=numb + 1}} {Ref numb} Black” “”}

{SET numb {=numb + 1}} {Ref numb}Blue

If you have any queries regarding SET, REF, SEQ, IF or any other field codes, ask us using the comments field below.