Have date in my Excel doc that changes to today's date.

[Wartburg College]

I have a date that I use to send the letters out and I set the letters up a
month in advance. When I am doing the mail merge the date that is set to the
Excel is being changed to today's date that I am creating it. Is there a way
that I can get it to stay at the right date that I have set?

Thanks

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What field code are you using to insert your date?

(Use Alt-F9 to see the underlying field code).

It should look something like

{ MERGEFIELD "the name of the date column in Excel" \*Mergeformat }

Also, which version of Word/Excel?

Peter Jamieson

 

[Wartburg College]

I am using Office XP. Word and Excel are both XP. I have formatted the cell
in Excell to print out the month (August). When I merge into a Word
document, the date is today's date. The field code is MERGEFIELD date. The
date is then changed in to mm/dd/yy format. Not the mmmm/d/yyyy that I would
like with the month spelled all the way out. The currency is also being
changed into $52.0100000000001 not just $52.01 like I Have it set up to be.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Ok, it sounds as if the problem is not the date itself, but the format of
the date.

In that case, there are really two options:
a. change the way you connect to the data source.
b. use Word date format "switches" to format the date correctly

For option (a), you need to check Word|Tools|Options|General|"Confirm
conversion at Open", go through the process of reconnecting to your data
source, then choose the DDE option when it is offered.

For option (b), open your Word mail merge main document, press alt-F9, and
you should see the underlying field codes e.g. { MERGEFIELD mydate }

Change that to

{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@"MMMM/D/YYYY" }

and see if that gives you the result you need. If not, have a look in Word
Help for further info. on how to define the bit after \@

For the numbers, try

{ MERGEFIELD mynumber \#,$.00 }

Peter Jamieson

 

[Graham Mayor]

See http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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