Mysterious bold font in MailMerge fields

[Denise]

Hi, I am hoping someone can help me, a lowly non-expert in Word! I am working on developing some MailMerge letters. For some reason, when the final document is merged and generated, some of my merge fields are coming out BOLD! I cannot figure out where this is coming from - when I select them, the bold button is not depressed (but I'm getting there!). I have even deleted these fields and reinserted them, but the same thing happens. There are not bold fonts directly before or after them, or anywhere near them! Only a very few of the many fields I have are coming out this way. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Denise

[BAM]

Hi Denise,

See if adding the * CharFormat switch to the field(s) (and deleting * Mergeformat, if present) makes a difference.

For this, use <Alt F9> to toggle the field codes and add the switch at the end. It would look something like:
{ MERGEFIELD FirstName * CHARFORMAT}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cheers!

[Denise]

Thanks, BAM!

In the meantime, I contacted a Word expert at my former job, and she helped me resolve this. Although looking at the original document did not show bold formatting, and the bold key was not depressed, when I went to Format...Style, it did show as bold (along with whole sections that did not browse OR print as bold!). I had to click on the Modify button, then the Format button, then select Font, and changed it from bold to regular. Then something really weird happened. When I clicked on Apply, entire paragraphs changed from regular to bold, while other entire paragraphs changed from bold to regular! I was then able to select the various paragraphs and turn the bold button off or on, as required. Then, when I ran the letter, it came out right! I think this goes back to when I copied and pasted some paragraphs (I have about half a dozen different letters I'm working on) - when I pasted them, they turned bold (and in some cases, blank lines were eliminated), even though they weren't where I copied them from, so I had just selected them and turned the bold button off. I guess when I did that, to the eye the whole thing looked normal, but the MergeFields were really still bold behind the scenes.

Thanks again!
Denise