How to change the template / format of Mailing Address Blocks?

The simple answer is to not use the AddressBlock tool. Instead, insert and format the mergefields etc. as per your requirements.

Hi,

Thank you a lot for the reply!

I do take Mr. Macropod's suggestion seriously, but I am really curious that WHY that happens and I would prefer to fix it if it is possible to do so. I have watched the assignment demo which was uploaded by my instructor (by the way, it is not a Word course), and her address block looks completely perfect, so I deduced that it is probably a setting problem of my Word or my computer but I have no idea why that happens.

Thanks,

Hortense

I understand and appreciate your desire to know why. Generally, I share that desire and have learned a lot about Word over the years from delving into things. I hope that Paul's advice to revisit the Match Fields process helps you to do this.

You might want to share what you learn with your instructor. I am guessing an Access course.

(I have been lazy and just want to get the letters out over the years and went with the simple method of using the fields themselves.)

What is your objection to using mergefields? After all, you only need to insert them once for the mailmerge main document used for all mailmerges from the selected data source. Moreover, if you configure them as you desire in one mailmerge main document, you can then copy them to a template from which you can create future mailmerge main documents that use the same field names.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

This (using mergefields) is exactly the solution that I want to prevent. Besides using mergefields, I would rather like to know why is this happening and how can I change it.

Thank you

As long as I have been participating in Word newsgroups/forums, the address block has been problematic. That is 30 years or so, dating back to Word 5, which predated Word 95 and 97. Using individual merge fields has long been the suggested remedy. (I believe that Macropod knows more about merge fields and mail merge than most of the people working on Word at Microsoft. You should take such a suggestion seriously.)

You can create your own addressblock of sorts by inserting the mergefields, selecting them, and saving as an AutoText entry if you want to make them easy to insert.

I do not know how your data is set up, but the order seems to be reversed. If this is for a class on how to use Word, you should ask your teacher.

Otherwise, if you want, save a sample primary merge document and a sample dataset. Save them on OneDrive or DropBox, post links here, and someone here will likely look at them and give you other advice. It is just that with the individual merge fields you have so much more control over what happens!

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

This (using mergefields) is exactly the solution that I want to prevent. Besides using mergefields, I would rather like to know why is this happening and how can I change it.

Thank you