MS Word merge fields - how do I suppress extra blank spaces inserted during the merge process?

Thanks to everyone for your comments. The solution I've come up with is as follows:

First, remember the original problem I posed:

When the data being merged consists of a number, the screen and print output adds unwanted extra spaces at the beginning and end of the number.

For example:

Mail merge template:    The sale price of the property was ${MERGEFIELD Sale_Price}.

Merged output:    The sale price of the property was $ 300,000.00 .

As you can see above, the merge process has inserted an unwanted space before 300,000.00, and a second one at the end of the number, before the period at the end of the sentence.

The way I got rid of the unwanted spaces was to insert an Excel "number picture" into the merge field. So, the merge field now looks like this:

Mail merge template:  The sale price of the property was ${MERGEFIELD Sale_Price # "#,##0.00" }

Merged output:   The sale price of the property was $300,000.00.

You can get rid of the pre-typed dollar sign and have it inserted automatically as follows: 

Mail merge template:  The sale price of the property was {MERGEFIELD Sale_Price # "$,##0.00" }

Merged output:   The sale price of the property was $300,000.00.

I now need to have someone now go through dozens of my templates to fix these fields this way. A lot of people will just ignore things like this and send out letters full of spaces. If you want your work to look perfect, however, you'll have to fiddle with your numeric merge fields first.

# "#,##0.00"