How to emulate a radio button during MS Word mail merge

Question

I am trying to display the results of a survey using an MS-Word mail merge document paired with an Excel table. The survey has a radio-button question: "What is your project Status." The value in the excel table could be one of five values: {pre1, pre2, con1, con2, aban}. Without substantially altering the original look of the survey, I would like to indicate which status was chosen.

So far I have worked out how to use this conditional merge field on MS Word 2010. I set it up by clicking through Mailings > Rules > If...Then...Else... and entering the appropriate vales where prompted. After setting up, the code is revealed by pressing ALT-F9.

{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="pre1" "CHECK!" ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="pre2" "CHECK!" ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="con1" "CHECK!" ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="con2" "CHECK!" ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="aban" "CHECK!" ""}

However, rather than using the text, "CHECK!", I would like to add a symbol instead. The survey uses Wingdings character code #161 for the unselected item, and I would like to use Wingdings character code #181 to emulate a selected item.

I've found that I can manually insert this special character by using the merge-field brackets. The field boundaries { } are inserted with CTRL+F9, and not by using the Insert Merge Field button or typed directly from the keyboard.

{ SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u }

But when I combine these two features into this...

{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="pre1" { SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u } ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="pre2" { SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u } ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="con1" { SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u } ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="con2" { SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u } ""}
{IF{MERGEFIELD projstatus}="aban" { SYMBOL 181 \f Wingdings \u } ""}

...the code fails to fire and I am left with no result whatsoever. What I don't understand is why I can't combine these to features. I have found very little guidance on using the SYMBOL field code. Is this incorrect syntax? What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I don't know why you can't combine it as you have, but ...

Maybe I'm missing something, but when you are typing out the mergefield statement, where you currently have "Check!", just replace it with the symbol you want directly (i.e., put your cursor there, then on the 'insert' tab, click the symbol dropdown, and pick your appropriate wingdings symbol).

I just tried it on my mergefield setup and it works fine. The font around that field is not set up as wingdings but the symbol still shows up as wingdings anyway.