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