The File Name formulas that you create may contain some database field lookups, and the database fields for some records may be completely empty or blank. You may also see some phantom empty "records" beyond the end of the database on the last page of a series of labels. The blank fields will probably prevent the resulting file name from matching any graphics file, and OnMerge Images will fall back to the behavior that the Missing-image option specifies.

The regular missing-image is fine for some applications, but some applications require one kind of action for truly "missing" files but need a blank in the case where the whole database record is empty/blank

Setting the Empty-Record Behavior

Click the Merge Options tab in an image's OnMerge Images dialog to access the empty-database action frame. Select one of the buttons to indicate what should happen only in the case where all the database fields in the file name formula are empty/blank for a given record.

Merge as usual causes missing-image to go on as usual as described in the Handling Missing Images topic.

Merge blank image will make OnMerge use a blank for a given record when ALL the database and address fields in the file name formula are blank or missing. This will occur even if the file name formula is a mix of database/address and other types of fields. The Make blank tiny option is available when Merge blank image is selected; it works just like the Make this image tiny option in Handling Missing Images. Again, the result of selecting Make blank tiny will show up in final merges only. Word's on-screen preview will not make preview images tiny because they'd be too small to select and edit.

Merge blank image with the Make blank tiny option is the closest OnMerge can come to making a missing image completely disappear without taking up any space: it is invisible except for adding a tiny, hard-to-notice blank space to your layout.