Mail Merge Dropping Leading Zeroes

[BobB]

Using Excel 2007 and Word 2007, I created a mail list in Excel formatting the
5-digit zipcodes as ZIPCODES and the 9-digit zipcodes as ZIPCODE+4. When I
previewed and printed the merged data, I saw the zipcodes with a leading zero
had the zero truncated (ie 02035 printed as 2035) and the 9-digit zipcode
printed as a 0. I temporarily resolved the problem by changing all 0-prefixed
zipcodes with '0 to make it a text field. I defined the 9-digit field as TEXT
also. Anyone else encounter this problem? Any suggestions how I can fix this?
Thanks in advance for any advice given..

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

See "Formatting Word fields with switches" on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's
website at

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


--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[BobB]

I found Graham's website shortly after posting question. I printed his 19
page PDF file and applied his suggestions. Then I tried typing in the
IF-Then-Else solution. It worked for the Zip + 4 entry, but the zipcodes
under 10000 are still coming up as 4 digits. I tried using the Rules on the
Ribbon to enter the If-Then-Else, but that was a failure. So I manually typed
the code. I seem to recall that under Word 2002 it was easier to enter
MERGEFIELD entries. I'm not doing this correctly because I see others have
had their success noted on other posts. I'm merging labels only, a task I
have performed with prior versions of Word.

 

[BobB]

There must be gremlins running amok in my software. I went back to my mail
merge just entering the zip code using the Insert Rule from the Ribbon. I
followed Graham's advice . This time it worked. So I added all the other
pieces of the address and it still worked. I cannot figure out what I did
differently one hour ago. I'm going to make one more test from scratch and
when it works, save three copies of the result so I never, ever have to go
through this again.