Is there a way to edit a fmail merge field so that it just display's the first character.

For example if my source data is "Herring" the merged letter just says "H".

Following on from that is it possilbe to only show the first character and any subsequent character that follows a space? For example if my source data was "Herring Trout" it would show "H T"

I'm trying to do mail merges direct from SIMS and I'd like to know if I can generate the middle initials in a merge so I can't really edit the source data.