Tom,
MVPs are not MS employees - we're volunteers and most of us aren't shy at criticising shortcomings in MS products (you'll note
Graham's characterisation of DDE as unreliable). If you want to preserve the format, you can use DDE (which i find works well enough
for most purposes). If you don't want to use DDE, or you want to change the format, MS has given you the tools to apply whatever
format you want at the output end.
--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
"Tom" wrote in message ...
Me again. I don't want to labour the point but when I insert a date field in
a doc it displays the date in European date format. So it must be a bug when
it does not do so in a mail merge from Excel. It seems to be very difficult
for MVPs (and MS) to admit there's a bug which should be fixed.
"Tom" wrote:
I would have thought that Word reads the underlying data as a number (Excel
stores dates as numbers) which it then displays as a date using the American
date format. This algorithm could be modified to consult the system date
format (as set in Control Panel) and display the number as a date in that
format. A few lines of code would do it if they were minded to.
"Graham Mayor" wrote:
They are not going to change it.
Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an
American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American
application. However all the tools required to format to match any language
requirements are provided.
Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using
DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the
formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the
more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the
formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have
to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated.
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
Tom wrote:
OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be
persuaded to change it?
"macropod" wrote:
Word 2003 was no different.
--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
"Tom" wrote in message
...
macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how
crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on
my machine even though my regional settings are set to English
(Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format,
without giving me the option of changing this option?
This used not happen if Word previous to 2003.
"macropod" wrote:
Hi Ames,
You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your
mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press
Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} ..
edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice.
For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD
myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same
as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your
mailmerge.
--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
"Ames" wrote in message
...
Hi there..
I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in
format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word
doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08.
I have checked the language settings to make sure they are
English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried
selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields.
I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions??