Saving the Long Date Format for Mail Merge

[JewliaB]

I'm attempting a rather complex mail merge and am using Access to organize the information. However, in the letter which I am sending, there are dates that need to be included. I would like to use the long date format, but whilst I can get it to appear that way in Access, I am unable to get it to save the date in that format in the computer. Thus, when I access the mail merge, it appears in the mm/dd/yyyy format instead of day, month dd, yyyy. Is there a way to format the cell so that it saves it in that format? If not, could someone please provide me with the formula to copy data from one cell into another and force it to be text instead of a formated value?

 

[RuralGuy]

You should MailMerge with a query rather than a table. Then use the Format() function to display the date field any way you want.

 

[JewliaB]

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it very much.
I know that I could format it in the querry. This is what I've already done. I already have the information in the querry for some other calculations. However, I was hoping that I could just format the cell because I honestly don't want to have the extra cells necessary to use the format(). I have five different date, four of which are calculated based on the first. Since I'm doing a mailmerge, the fewer extraneous cells I have to deal with, the better.

 

[RuralGuy]

I'm not sure why the extra fields are a problem but creating a second query that uses the first but does not include extra fields should solve that problem.

 

[Brianwarnock]

I don't understand about extraneous cells in the query, you only select those you require
Say you have a date called olddate and you add 7 days to get a newdate and both go to the mail merge as text then you
Select CStr(Format([olddate ],"dd/mmmm/yyyy")) AS textolddate, CStr(Format(DateAdd("d",7,[olddate]),"dd/mmmm/yyyy")) AS textnewdate

You donot need to select the nontext fields.

Brian

 

[Brianwarnock]

The trouble with being a slow typist is that others respond whilst I'm in action, I use that word loosely

Brian

 

[RuralGuy]

Hi Brian,
I thought we'd just use the other thread.

 

[Brianwarnock]

I hadn't noticed the other thread just replied to the first one I came too, actually if I had I wouldn't have responded with you on the case.

Brian

 

[RuralGuy]

I asked the Mods to combine the threads if possible.

 

[Pat Hartman]

You need to take off your spreadsheet hat and put on your relational database hat. A table in datasheet view may look like a spreadsheet but the relationship is superficial at best. There is no such thing as a cell in a relational table. A cell is the intersection of a row and a column and has a specific name in a spreadsheet. The intersection of a row and a column in a table does not have a specific name and cannot be directly addressed. In a relational database, the rows of a table are identical from the perspective of their definition. They may contain different values but they are always the same definition. Columns in a table have unique names but to address what you are calling a cell, you must open a recordset and position it to the row that contains the values you want. A form is positioned on a single row at a time and so when you reference a column, you are referencing that column in the current row.

Dates are stored as double precision numbers which enables calculations to work easily. They are displayed in whatever format you choose.