Hide Dot Leaders when Fields are empty in Data Merge

Question

I'm currently working on a document in Adobe InDesign that includes dot leaders to separate a series of fields. I've utilized the "Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields" option in Data Merge to hide any empty fields in the preview. However, despite the fields being hidden, the dot leaders still extend across the entire width of the line.

I'm wondering if anyone has encountered this issue before and knows of a way to conditionally format the dot leaders to be removed when the fields are empty?

Peter Spier · Answer

Lines are not empty if they have a tab character on them to separate two fields.

You will have to use Find/Change to remove lines with only a tab, but be careful as this can have an effect on paragraph style applied to the preceding or following paragraph if the style differs from the paragraph being deleted.

There is a (quite long) thread from ten years ago that discusses this at length at https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/multiple-record-data-merge-into-paragraph-styles-applies-the-wrong-style/td-p/5633549#5866698

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