Mail Merge: Best way to deal with unknown recipients?

[DJ81]

I'm trying to create a database and it's going well accept for one facet. Some of my recipitents are not known by name. I am planning to use my database to issue letters, newsletters and the like but sometimes they will need to be addressed "Dear sir/madam" instead of "Dear Mr Smith" I was wondering to componsate for that in a database.

I've thought about using a "recipient" field, but I am not sure that would work too well as it would mean an extra field when it might not be needed (I can get "Dear Mr Smith" from fields such as Title and LastName).

I can't really get my head around it

One thing: Please don't think of me as some annoying mail-spam person. In truth I am a member of a charity but some of the businesses and charitable foundations we appeal to don't have named members for us to address letters to. Hence we need to use Dear Sir/Madam and the like.



Please help me. I've hit my head on the wall so many times that I think I am going to demolish it!!

 

[CraigDolphin]

Sounds like a possible application for the NZ() function.

In the query that forms your mailing list use something like:
Nz(<fieldname>,<value if null>)

eg.,
Expr1: Trim([Title] & " " Nz([Surname],"Sir/Madam"))

The trim function just gets rid of the extra space in front of the Sir/Madam if there is no title or surname.

Alternatively use an iif() function:
IIF(<logic test>,<value if true>,<value if false>)
eg.,
Expr1: IIF([Surname] & "" = "","Sir/Madam",[Title] & " " & [Surname])