US date format in merge field

[Michelle]

Hello, I am trying to sort out a problem for my sister, we live in the UK,
and her regional settings are configured to display dates as British dates
(dd/mm/yyyy). She is doing a mail merge from an Access table, the table has
some dates in a date/time field (which display correctly in British date
format). The mail merge all works correctly except that when they come into
Word, the dates are switched to US date format (mm/dd/yyyy). Dates normally
display correctly on her machine, and I can't see any way to change it in
this mail-merge.

Any Ideas? Please?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

There is a known problem here but only with some versions of Word
a. which version of Word? (can you provide the full version number from the
Help|About box?
b. you may be able to fix the problem using a "date format switch" in your
mail merge main document. Use Alt-F9 to display the underlying field codes
and if your date field is called mydate, Word will have something like

{ MERGEFIELD mydate \*Mergeformat }

type \@"DD/MM/YYYY" in there to give you

{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@"DD/MM/YYYY" \*Mergeformat }

and try again. Make really sure that ambiguous dates such as 05/06/2006 are
coming through the right way round
c. if that does not work, you may be able to work around by checking Word
Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open", then going through the
connection process again and selecting the DDE option when offered (NB, the
DDE method is obsolescent and doesn't pass through Unicode characters if you
happen to be using them). Again, be sure that ambiguous dates such as
05/06/2006 are coming through the right way round.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Joe Black]

Hi Peter I am having the same problem. can you please help. Word version
Office Pro 2003 Sp2. on Win Xp SP2.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

If you've already tried using the formatting switches and that hasn't
worked, try working through the suggestions and links in the following
article (and adapt for the UK date sequence):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304387/en-us

Peter Jamieson

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

See the "Dates: day/month reversed" item under the "Connection methods"
topic of the "Mail merge in Word 2002" section of fellow MVP Cindy
Meister's website at
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MergFram.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