Try this, Grace:
http://www.officearticles.com/word/m...osoft_word.htm
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Hope it helps!
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

"Grace" wrote in message
...
I have 1/7/1953 as a birth date in my Excel data sheet. In another column
titled "Today's Date" I have 2/9/2006, and both columns are formatted
EXACTLY
the same.

When I merge the labels, the Today's Date appears correctly as 2/9/2006.
The
DOB column appears as 19366. The date 1/31/1955 shows as 20120. I do have
one
birthday where I don't know the year so it's entered as 1/21/. This is the
only date that appears correctly in the merged document.

Any thoughts on what's going on?