Thanks Doug. I will follow up both of these suggestions and let you know how
I get on.
--
Judith


"Doug Robbins" wrote:

You might find something on comparing dates in Word at:

http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/show...?Number=249902

I think though that in Word, you will find it necessary to use a number of
nested If...then...else statements that separately compare the day, the
month and the year, whereas in Access, in a query you simply use

IIF([Date_Paid] #01/01/2005#, "This membership has expired", "This
membership is current")

Learn to use the power of Access.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Judith" wrote in message
...
I'm not exactly sure what you mean as I'm not very experienced with
Access.
Are you indicating that Word can't actually compare dates? I have today
tried
using the COMPARE function, but that seems to work only with strings and
numbers and the Help doesn't mention dates.
--
Judith


"Doug Robbins" wrote:

I would do the manipulation of the data with a query in Access.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Judith" wrote in message
...
I want to compare a MERGEFIELD date that has been extracted from an
Access
database with a typed in value as part of an If...then...else
statement.
For
example, if the Date_Paid field is less than 01/01/2005 I want to
insert
text
to say that the person's membership has expired.

The syntax I came up with is
{IF {MERGEFIELD Date_Paid} 01/01/2005 "This membership has expired"
"This
membership is current"}
but it doesn't work. I have also tried adding a date pattern of \@
dd/MM\yyyy, and using quotes around the coparison date.

I am using Word 2003.
--
Judith