Frustrated with Excel and Word merge

[Marushel]

Hello, I am not sure if the problem lies with Word or Excel, so I am posting
this on both discussion group.

I have been trying to figure out the source of this error for several
hours without any results and hope someone can help me. I have been using an
Excel file to create a merge letter in word. So far it has been working like
a charm and the problem started just after I entered some new records.

In my word merge letter after the City, State, and Zip fields, I have a
word field, which is set to insert a hyphen after Zip field if "zip suffix
field is not blank". (The "otherwise insert this text" is left blank). This
is followed by the zip suffix field. This is intended to show both the zip
and zip suffix separated by a hyphen if some addresses do have a zip suffix.
So far, this has worked fine, but after my latest entry of new records in the
Excel worksheet, green corners started appearing in the zip and zip suffix
fields though both the fields are formatted as text. I manually clicked
"ignore this error" and the flags went away. However, now whenever I am
merging, for most of the old records, the State, zip and zip suffix are
appearing as they should (e.g., PA 18723-1234 or PA 18723), but for all the
new records that I have just entered, the Zip and zip suffix are appearing as
0 (when there is no zip suffix) and as 0-0 when there is a zip suffix. I am
stumped and am unable to figure out why this is happening. What went wrong?
Can someone please help?

 

[Carol]

Select the cells that have the green corners and then look at your formula
bar to see what is there. Then compare that to the zip code cells that are
correct. I suspect you will find an error in your formula. That is why you
are seeing the green corners.

 

[Marushel]

I have not used any formula for the cells in question. The values are typed
in manually. When I click on the cells with the green corners, I am seeing
exactly the contents of that cell---e.g., when the zip code is showing 33606,
in the formula bar also I see 33606. The same thing goes for Zip suffix as
well.

After I have clicked manually on each of those cells and selected "ignore
this error," I am able to get rid of the green corners, but in both the
cases, the results of the merged file in Word are the same---i.e., for some
of the older records it isState, Zip-zip suffix (e.g.FL, 33606-1234) or just
the zip (FL, 33606) and for all the new records just entered (plus some of
the older records) it is <State>, 0-0 for or just <State>, 0 depending
whether there is an entry in the zip suffix field.

Marushel