doNotSuppressBlankLines (Remove Blank Lines from Merged Documents)

This element specifies how an application performing the mail merge shall handle blank lines in the merged documents resulting from the mail merge. Typically, when a mail merge is performed, any blank lines which result from lines whose sole contents are merge fields with no content are removed from the merged document in order to prevent extraneous blank lines from appearing in the merged documents. When this element is present, the merged documents which are generated from the mail merge shall not have any blank lines removed before they are sent to their destination format.

If this element is omitted, the merged documents generated from this mail merge shall have all blank lines suppressed if they consist of only merge fields with values consisting of empty strings.

[Example: Consider a WordprocessingML document containing a single WordprocessingML field calling for Test data as seen in the first column of the table below. If the current record in the mail merge data source contains an empty string for the Test column, the resulting merged document would be displayed as follows depending on the setting for the doNotSuppressBlankLines element:

Source Document

<w:doNotSuppressBlankLines val="on" />

<w:doNotSuppressBlankLines val="off" />

One

Two

{MERGEFIELD "Test" }

Three

One

Two

Three

One

Two

Three

With this element set to a value of on, the blank lines in the resulting document shall not be suppressed when the resulting merged documents are created. end example]

Parent Elements

mailMerge (§2.14.20)

Attributes

Description

val (On/Off Value)

Specifies a binary value for the property defined by the parent XML element.

A value of on, 1, or true specifies that the property shall be explicitly applied. This is the default value for this attribute, and is implied when the parent element is present, but this attribute is omitted.

A value of off, 0, or false specifies that the property shall be explicitly turned off.

[Example: For example, consider the following on/off property:

<w:… w:val="off"/>

The val attribute explicitly declares that the property is turned off. end example]

The possible values for this attribute are defined by the ST_OnOff simple type (§2.18.67).

The following XML Schema fragment defines the contents of this element:

</complexType>