In a mail merge document, using excel as the database, I have three date
fields. In Word (and Excel) each is formatted to show the day month and year,
as follows:

MERGEFIELD "Action_Date" \@ "d MMM yy"

It works correctly on two of the fields but one shows the serial number
instead of day month year.

Hi Celeste,

If you change the formatting of the dates in Excel to 'General' do they all
change to serial numbers also? If not, the ones that don't are probably
being stored in Excel as text. Correcting that may get your mailmerge to
work correctly, since Word determines the data type from the first record in
each field. If Word decides the Excel fields are text, then the dates that
don't change to serial numbers would be merged correctly, as text strings,
but the date that does change will be imported as a string equal to the
serial number value of the date in Excel.

Cheers


"Celeste" wrote in message
...
In a mail merge document, using excel as the database, I have three date
fields. In Word (and Excel) each is formatted to show the day month and
year,
as follows:

MERGEFIELD "Action_Date" \@ "d MMM yy"

It works correctly on two of the fields but one shows the serial number
instead of day month year.

Thanks, for the information. If I understand what you are saying I don't
think it is the problem. All the dates are formated the same in Excel,
dd-MMM-YY. All the date show up a serial numbers until I formated them in the
merge document. Only one will not change. Even when I copy and paste the
format code.

Celeste

"macropod" wrote:

Hi Celeste,

If you change the formatting of the dates in Excel to 'General' do they all
change to serial numbers also? If not, the ones that don't are probably
being stored in Excel as text. Correcting that may get your mailmerge to
work correctly, since Word determines the data type from the first record in
each field. If Word decides the Excel fields are text, then the dates that
don't change to serial numbers would be merged correctly, as text strings,
but the date that does change will be imported as a string equal to the
serial number value of the date in Excel.

Cheers


"Celeste" wrote in message
...
In a mail merge document, using excel as the database, I have three date
fields. In Word (and Excel) each is formatted to show the day month and
year,
as follows:

MERGEFIELD "Action_Date" \@ "d MMM yy"

It works correctly on two of the fields but one shows the serial number
instead of day month year.