Menu:

Links:

Use these links to navigate the FAQ:

Next:
Troubleshooting problems with Merge

Previous:
Problem: extra blank lines appear in text after merge (PowerPoint 2007)

All about Merge index page

Updated
7/25/2016

Microsoft MVP Logo

Problem: "No text on this slide matches field names in your data file"

Problem

You start a merge and receive an error message:

No text on this slide matches field names in your data file

What's happening?

Before starting a merge, PPTMerge looks at the field names in your data file then searches for matching merge fields in your PPT merge template file. If it doesn't find any matches, you'll see this message.

If there are no matching fields, there's nothing for Merge to do, so it stops at this point.

But there ARE matching fields in my presentation! Part One

Merge tests the fieldnames in your data file to ensure that they're properly formatted and contain no invalid characters. If you've corrected problem fieldnames in the data file but not in your PPT template, Merge won't find any fields to merge.

But there ARE matching fields in my presentation! Part Two

This can sometimes happen for other reasons. Merge looks at text in:

Merge doesn't look at the text in:

If you have merge fields in shapes on this second list, you can usually solve the problem as follows:

Merge will now be able to examine the text inside this new shape and will find merge fields included in the text.

If copy/pasting as EMF doesn't preserve the formatting well enough, another approach is to remove any text with merge fields from the original shape, then add new text boxes atop it and put the text, including merge fields, in the new text boxes.

[Previous] [Home] [Next]