[Peter Jamieson]

There's a fairly detailed page about the "0" problem at

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk/t0005.htm

(although it is a bit out of date).

Although Doug has told you most of the useful workarounds, changing the
format of the cell may or may not be enough once data of the wrong
format has already been entered. In that case, the following may do the
trick:
- select the column
- select the Data|Text to Columns... menu option
- click Next through the wizard until you reach Step 3 of 3, then
select Text as the Column Data Format.

When I look at the merge field in the merge document, it shows as
"unit", not "unit$". I cannot seem to place "unit$", as all my efforts
automatically revert to "unit"

Is this the cause of my inaccurately merged data? Are "$" not permitted
in merge fields?

No - the problem is the one described by Doug. The other problem is that
Word will strip out $ from field names, hence "unit" instead of "unit$",
but it only renames the field - it doesn't ignore it altogether.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

On 12/04/2010 03:47, MaxArk wrote:
I am merging data from an Excel database into a word document using the
mail merge feature.

I am merging a column of data with a header name of "unit$".
I have noticed that in most cases it merges data accurately, but with
some instances, where the datasource is text, like upper, east , west
etc, it will merge into the document as a 0 (zero).

When I look at the merge field in the merge document, it shows as
"unit", not "unit$". I cannot seem to place "unit$", as all my efforts
automatically revert to "unit"

Is this the cause of my inaccurately merged data? Are "$" not permitted
in merge fields?

Jenn