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#1
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
Hi there..
I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#2
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
Hi Ames,
You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#3
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
hey ames,
i sometimes find that if i am having formatting problems with a excel spreadsheet, i save the file as a csv file instead. i then use the csv file as my data source for the merging routine. i find that this usually helps if there are any formatting issues. it is especially useful for numeric data that appears in my document with to many decimal places etc. it should solve your date problems as well. i hope this is of some help to you. -- Pablo "Ames" wrote: Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#4
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
By default Word's mail merge inserts the underlying data from the worksheet.
It is a simple matter to add formatting switches to the fields to resolve the problems with numeric data and dates without the need to export to csv first. http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Pablo Jord wrote: hey ames, i sometimes find that if i am having formatting problems with a excel spreadsheet, i save the file as a csv file instead. i then use the csv file as my data source for the merging routine. i find that this usually helps if there are any formatting issues. it is especially useful for numeric data that appears in my document with to many decimal places etc. it should solve your date problems as well. i hope this is of some help to you. Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#5
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
See the "Dates: day/month reversed" item under the "Connection methods"
topic of the "Mail merge in Word 2002/2003" section of fellow MVP Cindy Meister's website at: http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindy...r/MergFram.htm -- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#6
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS
software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#7
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
Word 2003 was no different.
-- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#8
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
See the "Dates: day/month reversed" item under the "Connection methods"
topic of the "Mail merge in Word 2002/2003" section of fellow MVP Cindy Meister's website at http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindy...r/MergFram.htm -- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#9
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded
to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#10
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
They are not going to change it.
Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American application. However all the tools required to format to match any language requirements are provided. Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Tom wrote: OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#11
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
I would have thought that Word reads the underlying data as a number (Excel
stores dates as numbers) which it then displays as a date using the American date format. This algorithm could be modified to consult the system date format (as set in Control Panel) and display the number as a date in that format. A few lines of code would do it if they were minded to. "Graham Mayor" wrote: They are not going to change it. Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American application. However all the tools required to format to match any language requirements are provided. Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Tom wrote: OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#12
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
Me again. I don't want to labour the point but when I insert a date field in
a doc it displays the date in European date format. So it must be a bug when it does not do so in a mail merge from Excel. It seems to be very difficult for MVPs (and MS) to admit there's a bug which should be fixed. "Tom" wrote: I would have thought that Word reads the underlying data as a number (Excel stores dates as numbers) which it then displays as a date using the American date format. This algorithm could be modified to consult the system date format (as set in Control Panel) and display the number as a date in that format. A few lines of code would do it if they were minded to. "Graham Mayor" wrote: They are not going to change it. Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American application. However all the tools required to format to match any language requirements are provided. Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Tom wrote: OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#13
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
Tom,
MVPs are not MS employees - we're volunteers and most of us aren't shy at criticising shortcomings in MS products (you'll note Graham's characterisation of DDE as unreliable). If you want to preserve the format, you can use DDE (which i find works well enough for most purposes). If you don't want to use DDE, or you want to change the format, MS has given you the tools to apply whatever format you want at the output end. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... Me again. I don't want to labour the point but when I insert a date field in a doc it displays the date in European date format. So it must be a bug when it does not do so in a mail merge from Excel. It seems to be very difficult for MVPs (and MS) to admit there's a bug which should be fixed. "Tom" wrote: I would have thought that Word reads the underlying data as a number (Excel stores dates as numbers) which it then displays as a date using the American date format. This algorithm could be modified to consult the system date format (as set in Control Panel) and display the number as a date in that format. A few lines of code would do it if they were minded to. "Graham Mayor" wrote: They are not going to change it. Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American application. However all the tools required to format to match any language requirements are provided. Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Tom wrote: OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
#14
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Incorrect date format coming across in mail merge from excel
FWIW I also believe that this could be done better, but logically speaking,
more information would have to be transferred within Office to achieve that in a way that would leave designers with no problems arising from ambiguities. And even then, there are arguably still choices to be made, somehow. Let's simplify the design problem for a moment by assuming that it is obvious that, by default, a date column in a merge data source should be formatted according to the Regional Settings in Control Panel. (Although of course /some people/ want their dates to be formatted the way they formatted them in Excel, which may not be the same). There's already a design issue. Which of the date formats in regional settings should Word use by default? But what if Word does not or cannot know that the column is a date column? For example, unless Word gets its Excel data from the obsolete Converter (which arguably is a component of Word), it probably does not receive any information from Excel that tells Word that a field is a date, a number or any other type of data. When you use a { MERGEFIELD } field to insert data, Word is inserting the text that it receives. Arguably, that is the right thing to do: even though Word is clearly capable of parsing various date formats correctly and therefore "guessing" that the column is probably a date column, why should it assume that it is? What if the column normally contains a piece of text that is not a date, but contains something that looks like a date in some rows? Should it format the ones that look like dates as dates? What if they are actually serial numbers of some kind? AFAIK Word just displays the text as is. It's only when you try to apply a formatting switch, or do a calculation, or perhaps do a comparison that Word really has to try to determine what date the string contains etc. etc. In other words, you have to tell Word that the text string is a date, and at the moment the only way to do that is to use a date formatting switch. In some cases Word may be theoretically capable of determining that a column in a data source is a "date", but probably does not do so. I really do not know. For example, when it connects to a database such as Access via OLE DB, it could probably query the provider for the column type. That may be feasible in Excel as well, except for an additional wrinkle, which is that the cells in an Excel column do not necessarily all have the same format. When Word gets data from Excel via ODBC or OLEDB, the driver/provider determines a data type for the column (see http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk/t0003.htm if you are interested in the the gory details) then tries to coerce other types of data into that format. If Word can actually discover the column format from the driver/provider, then I believe it could format dates correctly in the case where the driver has decided that the column is a date column, because in that case the string transmitted always seems to be in US Date format. However, I do not know whether Word can discover that information. In a sense, you are probably better off ensuring that the driver/provider decides that the column is a text column, because then the driver/provider seems to use the format information in the Excel sheet. But even that does not solve the problem completely - it's OK if you know the sheet's dates are in the regional format you want. But what if the sheet was prepared in a country where the format is different? Unless Word knows what the original format is, it cannot reliably determine whether (for example) 10/12/2008 is 12th October or 10th December. Incidentally, Word probably never sees a date in Excel's daynumber.timestamp format, except when ODBC/OLE DB finds a date in a column that it thinks is numeric, in which case Word will just see a piece of text which happens to be a number. Then you also have to consider that some people may have entered dates as text format (i.e. Excel hasn't even stored them as dates). If you go slightly beyond that and consider that Word also lets you specify the language of a piece of text, as a designer you then have to consider whether a date (or number) should be formatted according to the standard regional settings for that language (and since a language does not necessarily imply a particular format standard (e.g. French speakers in Canada may format dates differently from French speakers in France etc., there would even be problems attempting that). Personally I think that the only way to provide the user with better choices in this area is to start shipping data within Office (and perhaps elsewhere) using ISO date/time standards (shame they didn't do that in the ODBC/OLE DB driver if those formats were defined and in widespread use at the time, which I think they probably were) in an XML format wrapper that allows "original format" information to be transmitted. In that case, people who also want other formatting info. from Excel such as bolding, italics etc. could also be satisifed. I also think it would be very helpful if it was easier in Excel for designers to specify a data type for a column and prevent users from deviating from that. Perhaps that is already possible. But people would still have to make choices in one way or another. On the subject of Microsoft's multi-lingual, multi-cultural support, it is probably quite interesting to compare what they have achieved with others. I haven't done it for a while, but around 4-5 years ago I loaded up a copy of Linux and one or two open source Office suites (probably Star- or OpenOffice and KOffice) on the grounds that they had been trumpeting their "internationality" for some time. But at that time the language support was very disappointing (no LTR,RTL text support for example AFAICR), nor was anyone able to suggest any other budget software that would do better. I expect things have improved on that front - it's almost inevitably the case given the way open source software is developed, but getting some of these international issues "right" is not a trivial exercise for anyone, especially if they also have a very large body of existing users to try to satisfy. -- Peter Jamieson http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk "Tom" wrote in message ... I would have thought that Word reads the underlying data as a number (Excel stores dates as numbers) which it then displays as a date using the American date format. This algorithm could be modified to consult the system date format (as set in Control Panel) and display the number as a date in that format. A few lines of code would do it if they were minded to. "Graham Mayor" wrote: They are not going to change it. Word reads the data in its raw underlying format, which is stored in an American date format - hardly surprising given that it is an American application. However all the tools required to format to match any language requirements are provided. Up to and including Word 2000, Word connected to its merge data source using DDE (which is still available). DDE is unreliable, but it did bring over the formatting from the data source. From Word 2002 Microsoft changed to the more reliable OLE DB method of connection. This does not bring over the formatting, so if you want something other than the raw data you will have to format it in Word - which Macropod has demonstrated. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Tom wrote: OK. But surely the question is why Word does this and how can MS be persuaded to change it? "macropod" wrote: Word 2003 was no different. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Tom" wrote in message ... macropad - Thanks for the solution but it only goes to show how crap MS software is and how arrogant Americans are. This happens on my machine even though my regional settings are set to English (Ireland). Why then should Word default to the US date format, without giving me the option of changing this option? This used not happen if Word previous to 2003. "macropod" wrote: Hi Ames, You can solve this by adding a date formatting switch to your mergefield. To do this: .. select the mergefield and press Shift-F9. You should see something like: {MERGEFIELD myDate} .. edit the field to include the formatting switch of your choice. For example: {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "d/M/yyyy"} or {MERGEFIELD myDate \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"}. The formatting options are the same as you'd get in Excel. .. press F9 to update the field .. run your mailmerge. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "Ames" wrote in message ... Hi there.. I am mail merging date fields from excel spreadsheet listed in format 24 September 2008 but when they come across into the word doc they display as the US date format 9/24/08. I have checked the language settings to make sure they are English - Australian (not US) on the word doc. I have tried selecting the correct date format when editing the toggle fields. I'm stuck! help!! ...any suggestions?? |
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