It's because by default, Word uses a method to get the data from Excel
that (a) ignores any formatting you imposed in Excel and (b) favours US
format, regardless of your regional settings. And even that is probably
either a simplification or incorrect.
For an explanation of sorts, you may find
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk/t0003.htm
useful
Typically you can fix the formatting problem by applying "date format
switches" to the relevant fields in your mailmerge main document. e.g.,
if your field is called mydate, use Alt-F9 to display the field codes,
look for
{ MERGEFIELD mydate }
and change it to
{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@"D MMMM YYYY" }
or
{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@"DD MMMM YYYY" }
if you want "09" rather than "9" for 9 Feb 2009
Then make sure it works with dates where the day number could be a month
number (i.e. 1 to 12) and the month number could be a day number (i.e. 1
to 12) to ensure they are not reversed.
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk
Rhianne wrote:
In the data source (excel) my date column is formatted to show dates as: (e.g)
12 February 2009. However the merge in the word document shows the date as
02/12/09 - which is the way in which Amercians write the date; nothing wrong
with that, but this document is going out in the UK so needs to be understood.
Why is this occurring? How can I rectify it.
Thanks
Rhianne