Terry Reigel wrote: > ... on testing I find that the space is optional. > Including or excluding the space has no effect on output. Well, Terry, I do believe that this was the "goal". However, as several people have shown by testing this goal was not achieved. <sigh> The final version of TMG, which unfortunately cannot be changed, demonstrates the following: TMG will always work as expected if there is a 'place holder' space. TMG will often, but *not* always, work as expected without that. > But I can't find documentation in Help that addresses this. See the two HELP topics and sections noted below, one for citations which I mentioned earlier, the other more general for memo fields: Topic: Citation (Existing) Section: Empty Split Citation Detail and Citation Memo Field Parts Topic: Memo Section: Empty Split Memo Field Parts So if users want to be *sure* empty split parts work as expected, they should always use a 'place holder' as recommended by HELP. And thanks to John Cardinal's Utility, I have described how it is easy to insert these place holders in the data in existing projects. Michael

On 7/14/2015 12:04 PM, Michael J. Hannah via wrote: > Terry Reigel wrote: > > ... on testing I find that the space is optional. > > Including or excluding the space has no effect on output. > > Well, Terry, I do believe that this was the "goal". However, as several > people have shown by testing this goal was not achieved. <sigh> Michael, As I recall the discussion with Bob and the beta team when this was addressed (I'm thinking in TMG 6 or 7) the design was that it was to work only with a place holder. I was surprised to see that at least sometimes it works without. I believe that the conversion that was applied to existing Projects at the time interpreted entries under the old rules (which recognized three bars as two segment dividers) and re-formatted with two bars for each segment separated by a space if empty. So if cases exist with multiple bars without spaces I think they were added by users after that conversion. Terry Reigel