I have a table that I use for data merge. There are empty cells in it: an academic title that not everyone has

Example

Salutation: Dear
Academic title: Dr.
Last name: Miller

I I only have one text field, which makes things difficult for personalization for people who don't have an academic title:

" <<Salutation>> <<Academic Title>> <<Surname>> " --> " Dear Dr. Miller"

In the place where the academic title should be, these blanks appear, which can only be removed manually. With a list of 1,000 invitations, this is an enormous amount of time.

Via Search/Replace I cannot find the characters ... Support has not been able to help me either. Is there possibly an elegant solution for this problem? Now I have to split the tables in 2 for people with academic title & without, so the blanks are normal.

Version: InDesign 2022