You will find it a lot easier to make it 07/11/29 by using a formatting
switch

eg {Mergefield fieldname \@ "MM/dd/yy"}
or
{Mergefield fieldname \@ "dd/MM/yy"}
as appropriate for your location.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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


Lee Harris wrote:
I've gone to a lot of trouble formatting a series of strings that
look like
xx/xx/xx

where xx is a number (these aren't dates)

and adding spaces so that the length of the string is always 8
characters, then using a fixed width font with mail merge so that all
the columns lineup
however, when I insert the fields, it seems Word is ignoring any
leading spaces even if I specifically set the Excel data as text (and
also with a preceding ' character it still doesn't work)

how can I tell Word that when an Excel field is [space]7/11/29, I
want it printing with the space and not just as 7/11/29

many thanks if anyone knows

cheers,
lee