Date Time settings

[Mat]

I have created a merge form letter from and excel source.
At any time that I bring in a date field, it brings
forward a time of 12:00:00. Is there anyway to remove the
time?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Use Alt-F9 to reveal the field codes in your mail merge main document and
change e.g.

{ MERGEFIELD mydatefield }

to

{ MERGEFIELD mydatefield \@"MM/DD/YYYY" }

using whatever date format you need (see Word Help for more info.)

If you are seeing a problem where /blank/ dates in Excel appear as nothing
but a time, use an IF field such as

{ IF { MERGEFIELD mydatefield } = "12:00:00"
""
"{ MERGEFIELD mydatefield \@"MM/DD/YYYY" }" }

where all the {} are the special field braces you can insert using ctrl-F9,
and the 12:00:00 is whatever text you are getting from a plain

{ MERGEFIELD mydatefield }

field.

 

[DK Pfeiffer]

Hi

Sounds like you want to use a formatting switch on your field. In Word view
your field codes by pressing Alt + F9. Where you see your merge field or
date field, add
\@ "MMMM d, yyyy
at the end of the field to make the date appear as November 3, 2003.

Examples

{ MERGEFIELD "yourfieldname" \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" }
{ DATE \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" }

If you want a different format than November 3, 2003, you can look at the
options by selecting Date and Time from the Insert menu and picking the
format you want and checking Automatically Update, then ok and look at the
field code format it generates and use that in your field code to force the
time to not appear in your date.

Also there is information in Online Help (I'm not sure what version of Word
you have) but search under General Switches and Format (\*) field switch to
get more information on using this switch.

Hope this information resolves your issue.

DK Pfeiffer
Microsoft Technical Support for Business Applications

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[DK Pfeiffer[MSFT]]

Hi

Sounds like you want to use a formatting switch on your field. In Word view
your field codes by pressing Alt + F9. Where you see your merge field or
date field, add
\@ "MMMM d, yyyy
at the end of the field to make the date appear as November 3, 2003.

Examples

{ MERGEFIELD "yourfieldname" \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" }
{ DATE \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" }

If you want a different format than November 3, 2003, you can look at the
options by selecting Date and Time from the Insert menu and picking the
format you want and checking Automatically Update, then ok and look at the
field code format it generates and use that in your field code to force the
time to not appear in your date.

Also there is information in Online Help (I'm not sure what version of Word
you have) but search under General Switches and Format (\*) field switch to
get more information on using this switch.

Hope this information resolves your issue.

DK Pfeiffer
Microsoft Technical Support for Business Applications

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Rich]

I had the same problem. The dates were either blank or in
the correct format in my Excel Spreadsheet and the merged
document had either 12:00:00 or a different date format
for all of them.

I tried the other suggestion about the If etc = 12:00:00
but I ran into another problem that I didn't know the
answer to. I ran out of editting space in my label area.

Anyway, I did get around the problem by going back to the
Excel spreadsheet and entering a space at the first data
row of each of my date columns if it was empty. When I
reconnected the data via the using an existing list
selection in the mail Merge wizard - ALL of my dates come
out either blank or in the correct format, just the way I
wanted.

I am new so I am probably not saying everything right but
it worked for me.

Rich