Mail Merge

[mikeDonohue]

Hello,
I want to create letters to send to donors with the date of the donation. In the tables I want the date/time format to remain 10/30/2003, but when I do the mail merge I want it to be displayed: October 30, 2003. IS there anyone who can help?


Thanks

Mike

 

[Fornatian]

Change the format of the field to mmmm d", "yyyy and that should do it.

For your info, dates and times are stored as numbers in MS products and can be formatted anyway you choose really.

Having re-read your question, do you mean mailmerge with word? If so there is another technique you can use. merge with the table 'as is' and use a 'switch' it word to change the format.

{MERGEFIELD YourField\@ "d MMMM, yyyy"}

Insert your field into your document then press Alt-F9 to toggle to field view. now add \@ "d MMMM, yyyy" after 'YourField'

 

[RCheesley]

Important to note as I couldn't figure out why this wasn't working, you must update field after you apply this change

 

[Big Pat]

Resurrecting an old mail merge thread....

I'm having trouble working out how you use "switches" in Word. I have data in Excel, some entered, some calculated. E.g. a date entered and formatted as 31/05/2009 and a value calculated as 424.54333, but formatted in Excel as £424.54. I need to preserve these formats when I mail merge in Word.

My sentence is something like this: As of «LastDate» the cost is «Cost»

but it shows up like this: As of 5/31/2009 the cost is 424.54333, whereas I need to it read As of 31/05/2009 the cost is £424.54

Having read Fornation's post, I tried typing As of {MERGEFIELD «LastDate»\@ "dd/mm/yyyy"}, but that actually puts the word "MERGEFIELD" in my document along with the other characters and still leaves the date in the American format.

I also right-clicked and selected Update Field but that had no effect. My regional settings are correctly set to English (United Kingdom)

What do I need to do in Word to get these fileds correctly merged?

 

[RCheesley]

Did you try with the capital M?

Also make sure you do the last bit:

Insert your field into your document then press Alt-F9 to toggle to field view. now add \@ "d MMMM, yyyy" after 'YourField'

obv change to whatever you are using in terms of date formatting etc.

Ruth

 

[Big Pat]

Ahhh....That's what comes of reading instructions PROPERLY. I'd never seen that {MERGEFIELD} thing before and in my naivety I just typed it in. Alt+F9 makes all the difference. Thank you so much for a speedy response.

Now, any ideas how I can get 424.54333 to be formatted as £424.54? I've just checked the custom number format in Excel and it's shown as £#,##0.00;-£#,##0.00 Maybe I'll try \@ and all of that.

Thanks - you're a star!

 

[RCheesley]

No worries I had the very same issue myself when I was trying to sort it out many months ago ... after repeated banging of head on desk and tearing out of hair I figured I hadn't RTFM ... once I got that sorted it worked (iirc)

Ruth

 

[Big Pat]

I just came across an excellent tip on the Microsoft forum, which I thought i would post back here. It's written for Office 2007 but with one or two minor changes works just as well in Office 2003. Basically it's a method of preserving whatever format you happen to have in Excel: currency, leading zeroes, decimal places, whatever.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...n-us&mid=e235939d-dc09-4ab3-a5f8-2e8e37f768d8

I hope this helps someone.

Pat.