formatting doesn't stay

[Louise]

I am working with Excel 2003 and a large database. Part of what I am doing
involves
makeing labels that include name and birthdate and SIN number. After making
my list with the birthdate formatted to dd-Apr-yyyy and sin 000 -000-000,
when I go to Word to do labels, these two formats do not stay in the column.
They become dd/mm/yy and 000000000. When I first started doing this, it was
OK but now it is not working right. Did I do something to cause it not to
stay? If I print the list as a list it stays as I want it, just not when I
try to do labels.
I am wondering if it could be that my computer is part of a large network.
I had just been saving the database to the desktop then I started saving it
to the main drive on the network so I wouldn't loose all the work I have done
as it is saved each night.
A new Excel page saved to the desktop does the same thing.

 

[David Biddulph]

Formatting won't be carried across from Excel to Word. There are ways of
applying field formatting within Word, but the easiest option may be to use
the TEXT function to provide in Excel a text field of appropriate format,
which won't be reformatted on transfer to Word.

 

[Louise]

But it was working at first. I go to a Word document, Tools - Letters &
Mailings - Mail Merge - Labels and follow the directions. It was working but
not now.