And we have success! Wow this has been a long process thanks so much to everyone for their help. Uwe was right it was the XML codes. I've cut and paste the whole process below and will check my extensions. But I had two minor requests related to things that have been pointed out to me in previous posts:
1)Mike--You had mentioned there is a script for joining all the merged data into one story. I would like to do this. Remind me again where the script is?
2) I was going run a simple find/replace after the data was merged to put a space between an article like "The" or "a" in the title and the title, but I find that I'm a complete idiot with the Find/Replace tool. Has someone already done this and can show me how to do it?
This is the process that worked! I am running InDesign CS 6 Version 8.0 on Windows 7 Enterprise, Service Pack 1. Thanks to all of our your help:
1. I created a new data merge document in the Master page and applied paragraph styles to the merge fields:
2. I made sure that I was going to perform the data merge with blank lines inserted where there were empty fields:
3. Creating a new merged document:
4. I specified that the data would be laid out in columns:
5. I created the New Merge document:
6. Here is the new merged document:
7. I placed the javascript that Uwe created in my script panel and ran it. It got rid of the XML tags!
8. I ran the text search:
9. Then the GREP search got rid of the extra merge fields!
I am over the moon! I really can't thank you enough.
Lina