Graham, thanks again for persevering with this.
Removing the switch, saving the document and reopening (to make sure all
changes are applied) produces a field entry in Word of:
12:00:00 AM
When the Excel value is 0.
When I remove the date formatting from the Excel cell then the Word field
shows zero if the Excel value is zero.
However, the result when the Excel cell contains a date the Word field
contains the numerical value of the date, ie 36008 for 1st August 1998. This
result is unaffected by inserting the switch! (Again I saved and reopened the
documents)
I hope this helps you diagnose what I have got wrong.
David Hall
"Graham Mayor" wrote:
I appreciate that when the field has content it produces the date, but it is
what the field produces when the data is 0 that matters. Word interprets the
raw data and not necessarily what you see displayed in Excel, which is based
on the formatting of the cell.
So what *exactly* does the field (without a switch) produce when the cell
content is 0? Today's date can be expressed in a variety of ways - how does
the field express it?
I have to say that correcting the Excel data is the better plan if that is
available to you. Not everyone has that option 
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
David Hall wrote:
Graham thank you for your comments.
Whenever a date is present in E_Start the correct date is inserted in
the Word Doc, unfortunately I was unable to achieve a solution with
your suggestion.
The mailmerge is executed from a sheet that contains one row of data.
Which information is in this row is determined by a selection process
elsewhere in the workbook. Therefore if the main data has a blank
cell the corresponding cell in the row for the merge data shows a
zero.
I tried with a test Excel Doc and test Word Doc and got the same
'error'.
I find it really weird that a zero in the Excel cell is 'forcing'
today's date to be entered in the Word Doc.
Re-writing the Excel entry so that if the main data cell is equal to
zero (ie blank) the corresponding merge cell is to equal blank ( "" )
does solve the problem. So perhaps this is the best solution.
Obviously if another solution is possible I would be very interested
to receiving further postings.
David Hall
"Graham Mayor" wrote:
If today's date is being inserted into Word when there is a 0 in the
data file, then the merge is never seeing 0 as the result of the
merge. You have to check for what is *actually* being merged and not
what you expect to be merged.
What *exactly* does {Mergefield E_Start} produce?
You can then test for this instead of 0. If indeed it is today's date
(provided today's date is never E_start) then
{IF{MERGEFIELD E_Start} {Date}"{MERGEFIELD E_Start \@ "d MMMM
yyyy"}"}
might be nearer the mark. You will probably have to add switches to
both the first E_Start and Date.
You may find it simpler to use an alternative means of connecting
your merge to the Excel data - see the Excel data section of
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_lab...th_word_xp.htm
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
David Hall wrote:
Hi, this problem is really frustrating me so if you can help I would
really appreciate it.
I am using Word 2003 and Excel 2003 to do a mailmerge and I am
having a problem with today's date being inserted in the Word
document when the Excel value is zero. I would either like to show
the date that is entered in the Excel sheet or nothing if the Excel
value is zero.
My entry in the Word document is:
{IF{MERGEFIELD E_Start} = 0 "" {MERGEFIELD E_Start \@ "d MMMM yyyy"}
Where am I going wrong?
Many thanks
David Hall