Formatting of merge fields

[cdb]

I am having problems formatting the dates in merge fields.

The field I have is:

{MERGEFIELD "Start_Date"\@"dd/MM/yyyy"}

And yet on all dates where the dd is under 12, if formats it to mm/dd/yyyy -
can anyone offer any advice?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

If you are using Word 2002, this is a known problem (see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327579/en-us). It should have been corrected
in Office XP Service Pack 3.

Otherwise, which version of Word and what is the data source?

 

[cdb]

Word 2003 SP2.

Data source is an Excel 2003 spreadsheet - I've tried formatting the column
in Excel to text and dd/mm/yyyy but neither seem to help.

Ta,
cdb

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The simplest fix is likely to be to switch the way Word connects to Excel to
DDE (check Word Tools|Options|General|Confirm conversions at open, go
through the data source selection, select the DDE option in the extra
dialog. But then you only get to use the first sheet in the workbook, and
non-ANSI Unicode characters don't get through).

 

[cdb]

That works a treat. Thanks a lot for the help.

The simplest fix is likely to be to switch the way Word connects to Excel to
DDE (check Word Tools|Options|General|Confirm conversions at open, go
through the data source selection, select the DDE option in the extra
dialog. But then you only get to use the first sheet in the workbook, and
non-ANSI Unicode characters don't get through).