How do I control date formatting in a Word Mail Merge?

[Ric McWaters]

I am using MS-Word 2003 (11.5604.5606) with Excel 2003 (11.5612.5606) to do a
mail merge which includes a date from the spreadsheet. In previous versions
of Word and Excel, the resultant mail merge file displayed the date in the
format used to display the date in Excel. In the current version, it picks
up the date from the Regional and Language options set for the computer. I
reset the Regional and Language options settings to DD-MMM-YY, but this makes
the rest of the things I do look weird. Is there any way to force Word to
use the formatting in Excel?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The simplest way is to revert to the old method - chck Word
Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open", go through the process
of connecting to your Excel sheet again, and select the DDE option when it
is offered.

Alternatively, you can use date format switches, e.g. instead of

{ MERGEFIELD mydate }
use
{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@"DD-MMM-YY" }

but you may find that the day and month appear the wrong way around in some
cases.

Peter Jamieson