Word 2k: Date formatting question #1

[Neil Marsh]

Hi yet again...

I'm using the following to format my dates as they are pulled over from
Access into my Word merge file:

{ MERGEFIELD ANAirDate \@ "MMM. d, yy" }

which produces a date that looks like this:

Mar. 1, 80

However, I'd like the date to look like this:

Mar. 1, '80

Word help says I should just have to use this format to make it work:

{ MERGEFIELD ANAirDate \@ "MMM. d, 'yy" }

but Word barfs when I do that, giving me this error message:

Error! Picture string contains unmatched quotes.

Any ideas on fixing this? Is there perhaps some global setting in Word
that I may have toggled on or off to make it function differently from
everyone else on the planet?

-/\/

---
Neil Marsh * (e-mail address removed)
Cambridge, MA * http://AudioBoy.net

****************************************************************
"In the dream you are falling, lost in the listening distance as
dark locks in ... Nightfall!"

-- Opening narrative to "Nightfall"
CBC Radio horror anthology, 1980-1983
****************************************************************

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Neil,

Yeah, quotes and apostrophes are really tricky in Word fields. The only
way I was able to find (so far) is to use

{ Mergefield ANAirDATE \@ "MMM. d, { Quote “´” }yy" }

Where you'd need to press Alt+0180 to insert the accent-quote. I can't
find any way to do a plain '. I can get a curly-quote to work, as well,
but I think that would be much worse than the accent...

However, I'd like the date to look like this:

Mar. 1, '80

Word help says I should just have to use this format to make it work:

{ MERGEFIELD ANAirDate \@ "MMM. d, 'yy" }

but Word barfs when I do that, giving me this error message:

Error! Picture string contains unmatched quotes.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question
or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail