I found the following poet on the Excel general question board, and it worked
perfectly. I hope it now works with my mail merge.

Unmerge* your cells and use "CenterAcrossSelection" instead. <Format
<Cells <Alignment tab, *Uncheck* "Merge Cells", Expand the "Horizontal"
window, And choose the last option. -- HTH,

Thanks for your help.

"vezerid" wrote:

If your Excel data contain only first/last name then the formulas I
suggest might help you. The idea is that in some rows first and last
name will be separated into two cells but in some other rows they might
have been merged. If you identify such rows, then perform the
following, in order to break these data into two columns in all cases
(always assuming your data is only two words, they occupy columns A:B
and they start from A2).

In D2:
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ", TRIM(A2)), LEFT(A2,FIND(" ", A2)), A2)
In E2:
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ", TRIM(A2)), MID(A2, FIND(" ",A2)+1, LEN(A2)), B2)

Copy down and let us know if it works. You should be able to sort
columns D:E w/o any problem.

HTH
Kostis Vezerides