mail merge currency symbols not working

[oli merge]

Hello,

I am using Office 2000 (unfortunately) and trying to mail merge an excel
table to word. I have a column called 'CURRENCY' which contains either "£",
"US$" or "€".

It is placed before a mail merge field called "AMOUNT" which is just a
number.

I have done this before successfully, but today I get "£"s appearing as "œ"
and "€" as "?" although US$ is fine. I normally save the excel sheet as a csv
and it works. I have also tried saving as .xls but it makes no difference.

Please help, I dont want to change the Mail Merge at all since I must use it
as provided (so I CANT use if statements to format the AMOUNT field, I have
to use the CURRENCY field to denote which currency).

thanks,

 

[oli merge]

its ok i have found a way - if i save as "renewals.txt" (with the speech
marks) but actually choose .csv in the drop down box then it works.

for some reason.