blank date field

[Michelle]

I am merging from excel to word 2002. I have several
columns in the spreadsheet that have birthdates. I have
no trouble merging the cells that include a valid date.
But, for the cells in the date columns that are
intentionally blank, I get today's date in my merged word
document.

Thank you.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

of the possible ways of dealing with this, I'd suggest you try using an IF
field to test specifically for "12:00:00 AM",
e.g.

{ IF { MERGEFIELD mydate } = "12:00:00 AM" "" "{ MERGEFIELD mydate }" }

where all the {} are the special field braces you can insert using ctrl-F9.

You may need to change the text you compare with depending on your regional
settings.

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Michelle,

I take it the column in Excel has been formatted as
"date"...

I think you have two basic choices, here:
1) Use a different method to connect to the data. You'll
find instructions on how to do this in the Word 2002 section
of my website's Mail Merge FAQ

2) Use an IF field to check whether the merge field is
returning the current date (or a very recent date, if you
want to type in the value literally).

I am merging from excel to word 2002. I have several
columns in the spreadsheet that have birthdates. I have
no trouble merging the cells that include a valid date.
But, for the cells in the date columns that are
intentionally blank, I get today's date in my merged word
document.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jan
24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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