You can't use string operators in fields. Despite your reluctance to edit
the Excel data source, as Doug says, that is the best course; however if the
field is a number (as opposed to numbers and letters) then
{ =INT({ Mergefield Account_Number} /100000) } should do the trick.


--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Andy Chan wrote:
Dear all,

I want to perform a mail merge like this.

I have an Excel file with personal information of customers and
want to export it as Word documents and print it. One of the items to
be exported is called "Account_Number" (A string with 10 characters)
. However, I only want the first 5 characters to be shown on the
document. What can I do to the mergefield? Can I use some sort of
functions like Left(Account_Number, 5) as in Excel? I don't want to
modify the Excel file if possible. Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,
Andy