[William]

I am merging the name and address from an excel file to a word doc. For
those customers who's zip code is in the xxxxx-xxxx format, the zip is
merging into the word doc as a numeric zero. I tried to change the format in
the excel file to text and general but neither option worked. Zip codes with
just the five digits merged over fine.

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

See "Formatting Word fields with switches" on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's
website at

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.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

"william" wrote in message
...
I am merging the name and address from an excel file to a word doc. For
those customers who's zip code is in the xxxxx-xxxx format, the zip is
merging into the word doc as a numeric zero. I tried to change the format
in
the excel file to text and general but neither option worked. Zip codes
with
just the five digits merged over fine.

[[email protected]]

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:
See "Formatting Word fields with switches" on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's
website at

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm



I have the same problem. Office 2003. I printed 2000 envelopes on word
using excel data before I realized word was printing 0 instead of the 9
digit zip code. Is it really possible that no one at Microsoft or on the
office team knows that the Untied States postal service wants 9 digit
zip codes? How could this happen? Oh, right,... I forgot... it's
Microsoft. This is SO like them.

Anyway... Your fix is horrendous. I know nothing of field codes. The
directions are obscure and difficult to understand. AND they don't speak
to my specific problem.

Can someone on here PLEASE give me a blow by blow way to get word 2003
to print 9 digit zip codes getting data from excel in a mail merge?

Things I tried after looking in google.
Format the zip codes as text in the excel document.
Try and add on the /*text format for the field code
Substitute a space for the hyphen in the excel data.
Get another office Suite, any other office suite. No one else has this
problem.
Print all the envelopes, hire someone to hand correct the zipcodes, send
the bill to Microsoft.

So far nothing has worked.

john

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

If all of the zip codes are entered into Excel as 9 digit numbers, then all
that you have to do is use Alt+F9 to toggle on the display of the field
codes and then add the

\# "00000'-'0000"

Switch inside the closing }

If you have a mixture of 5 and 9 digit zip codes then you will have to use
the { IF } field construction that is shown in the article.

Please read the note in bold type at the bottom of the section on zip codes
in the article.

This is not difficult and will work just as well as your last method which
entails more work.

--
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

wrote in message
...
Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:
See "Formatting Word fields with switches" on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's
website at

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm



I have the same problem. Office 2003. I printed 2000 envelopes on word
using excel data before I realized word was printing 0 instead of the 9
digit zip code. Is it really possible that no one at Microsoft or on the
office team knows that the Untied States postal service wants 9 digit zip
codes? How could this happen? Oh, right,... I forgot... it's Microsoft.
This is SO like them.

Anyway... Your fix is horrendous. I know nothing of field codes. The
directions are obscure and difficult to understand. AND they don't speak
to my specific problem.

Can someone on here PLEASE give me a blow by blow way to get word 2003 to
print 9 digit zip codes getting data from excel in a mail merge?

Things I tried after looking in google.
Format the zip codes as text in the excel document.
Try and add on the /*text format for the field code
Substitute a space for the hyphen in the excel data.
Get another office Suite, any other office suite. No one else has this
problem.
Print all the envelopes, hire someone to hand correct the zipcodes, send
the bill to Microsoft.

So far nothing has worked.

john

[John]

I have come to expect 4-5 hour uptime in learning Micorsoft's "simple"
procedures. hitting Cntrl F9 and typing in 16 or 32 digit numbers is scary.

I checked "confirm Conversion at Open" and choose DDE (I think that's
what it was.) That got the numbers to show up correctly. A trial merge
to the printer showed word still printing 0's instead of the zip code.
So I merged it to documents. After that it worked fine.

So all in all the two hour job only took 10 hours and wasted only
300-400 envelopes. Not too bad for Microsoft and now I've learned yet
another quirk.

John

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:

If all of the zip codes are entered into Excel as 9 digit numbers, then all
that you have to do is use Alt+F9 to toggle on the display of the field
codes and then add the

\# "00000'-'0000"

Switch inside the closing }

If you have a mixture of 5 and 9 digit zip codes then you will have to use
the { IF } field construction that is shown in the article.

Please read the note in bold type at the bottom of the section on zip codes
in the article.

This is not difficult and will work just as well as your last method which
entails more work.

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Where do the 16 or 32 digit numbers come into it?

--
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

"John" wrote in message
...
I have come to expect 4-5 hour uptime in learning Micorsoft's "simple"
procedures. hitting Cntrl F9 and typing in 16 or 32 digit numbers is scary.

I checked "confirm Conversion at Open" and choose DDE (I think that's what
it was.) That got the numbers to show up correctly. A trial merge to the
printer showed word still printing 0's instead of the zip code. So I
merged it to documents. After that it worked fine.

So all in all the two hour job only took 10 hours and wasted only 300-400
envelopes. Not too bad for Microsoft and now I've learned yet another
quirk.

John

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:

If all of the zip codes are entered into Excel as 9 digit numbers, then
all that you have to do is use Alt+F9 to toggle on the display of the
field codes and then add the

\# "00000'-'0000"

Switch inside the closing }

If you have a mixture of 5 and 9 digit zip codes then you will have to
use the { IF } field construction that is shown in the article.

Please read the note in bold type at the bottom of the section on zip
codes in the article.

This is not difficult and will work just as well as your last method
which entails more work.

[Graham Mayor]

There's nothing scary about it. You virtually typed the string in the
subject of your post! And if pressing 0 several times is too onerous for you
you could copy and paste them into the field from the web page. DDE may work
(and is mentioned on my web site) but it is not reliable, which is
presumably why Microsoft no longer uses it.

If you had read the link Doug originally posted, which covers this
particular issue, the 10 hours work could have been completed in 10
minutes, and you wouldn't have wasted any envelopes! I really don't know why
we bother!

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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



John wrote:
I have come to expect 4-5 hour uptime in learning Micorsoft's "simple"
procedures. hitting Cntrl F9 and typing in 16 or 32 digit numbers is
scary.
I checked "confirm Conversion at Open" and choose DDE (I think that's
what it was.) That got the numbers to show up correctly. A trial merge
to the printer showed word still printing 0's instead of the zip code.
So I merged it to documents. After that it worked fine.

So all in all the two hour job only took 10 hours and wasted only
300-400 envelopes. Not too bad for Microsoft and now I've learned yet
another quirk.

John

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:

If all of the zip codes are entered into Excel as 9 digit numbers,
then all that you have to do is use Alt+F9 to toggle on the display
of the field codes and then add the

\# "00000'-'0000"

Switch inside the closing }

If you have a mixture of 5 and 9 digit zip codes then you will have
to use the { IF } field construction that is shown in the article.

Please read the note in bold type at the bottom of the section on
zip codes in the article.

This is not difficult and will work just as well as your last method
which entails more work.