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  #1   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
 
Posts: n/a
Default Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Hi Kerry:

The simplest thing I can suggest is "convert your fractions to decimals".

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a "fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them from
Excel to Word.

I hope I am wrong: I have cross-posted this message to the group that
specialises in Data Merge, so check back on Monday to see if anyone knows
how to do this. Data Merge is a specialist area! And we need to be aware
that the advanced VBA functions they have on the PC to deal with these sorts
of things are not available in Mac Word. (It's Word 97-level VBA, guys...)

So, somehow you have to represent your data in a form that can be described
in plain text.

What you "could" do is add two columns in Excel that expresses the fractions
numerator and denominator as plain text: so you would find 11 | 16 or
24 | 32 in those two columns. That *will* come across.

But once you get the data into Word, you would then have the problem of
converting the text data back into formatted fractions. Since Word doesn't
HAVE formatted fractions, this involves an Equation field.

Look up the Help for the EQ field. For example, { EQ \f(11,16) } will
display:
11
___
16

So if you had {EQ \f({ MERGEFIELD numerator },{MERGEFIELD denominator } } in
your main document, it might work. You would have to format the font to be
small enough so that it would not look silly (start with half the point size
of the surrounding text).

I am sorry, I cannot remember whether the Data Merge operation passes field
codes from the Main Document to the Output Document. I suspect it doesn't.
If that is the case, you need to bring the EQ field into the output document
as text. In other words, "type" the OUTER set of curly braces in the Main
document.

Then complete your merge and run a macro to convert the typed EQ fields into
"real" EQ fields. This is, barely, possible. But it's weeks of programming
unless you know AppleScript *really* well. If you are interested in this
approach, get back to us here. If I hunt around, I think I have a VBA
example that creates fields from plain text. But be warned, this is *not* a
simple operation. At least, it wasn't for me :-)

Sorry!

On 18/3/06 9:57 PM, in article , "Kerry
O'Shannessy" wrote:

Using Excel as Data source, when I merge data to word, I loose my formatted
fractions. No explicit Field switches that I can see for setting fractions.

Program has been working fine on a PC. Have been using Office 95 but after
researching Macintosh, decided to upgrade in this direction.

And Yes, no Fractions is a problem. There must be a way, can somebody help.

Mike



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

  #2   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
Peter Jamieson
 
Posts: n/a
Default Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a "fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.


As far as I can tell (Ii'm not a regular Mac Word user) this is correct, at
least in Mac Office 2004 on MacOSX. In Word 95 using the default connection
method (DDE) the characters seen in the Excel sheet would have come across,
i.e. if you entered 1/2, you would see 1/2. If you are able to add
formatting in Excel to make 1/2 look like
1
_
2
that won't come across in any version of Word as far as I know - In that
case, you could try
a. copying/pasting the Excel data into Word (this probably won't work if
you have more than 63 or 64 columns)
b. using that Word document as the data source
c. if your fraction column is called "fraction", use { REF fraction }
instead of { MERGEFIELD fraction } in the mail merge main document. This is
an undocumented feature so it would be unwise to rely too much on it, but it
does appear to work in Mac Word as well as the Windows version.

If you just need 1/2, 1/3 etc. you can either
a. use two columns as John suggests and use
{ MERGEFIELD numerator }/{MERGEFIELD denominator }
in your mail merge main document or
b. format the column as text in Excel - if you try to format the existing
column, Excel will just convert the fractions, but if you re-enter the
values, they should "stick". You may also be able to use a formula to
reference the fraction data from a column formatted as text.

John's suggestion for formatting using an EQ field should work because the
EQ field /is/ preserved in the output, at least if you merge to a new
document. When using EQ fields it is worth bearing two things in mind:
a. EQ was "deprecated" a long time ago. It may have been reprieved since,
but if for example you double-click on an EQ field, Word will convert it
into an Equation Editor field or the Mac equivalent, and this will change
the formatting
b. unlike most other field types, white space inside the closing brace of
an EQ field is significant, and will result in white space in your output.

If you do end up typing in separate numerators/denominators or fractions in
cells formatted as text, bear in mind that Excel will allow 2/4, whereas in
a field formatted as a fraction, it will convert that to 1/2.

Peter Jamieson

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" wrote in
message ...
Hi Kerry:

The simplest thing I can suggest is "convert your fractions to decimals".

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a "fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.

I hope I am wrong: I have cross-posted this message to the group that
specialises in Data Merge, so check back on Monday to see if anyone knows
how to do this. Data Merge is a specialist area! And we need to be aware
that the advanced VBA functions they have on the PC to deal with these
sorts
of things are not available in Mac Word. (It's Word 97-level VBA,
guys...)

So, somehow you have to represent your data in a form that can be
described
in plain text.

What you "could" do is add two columns in Excel that expresses the
fractions
numerator and denominator as plain text: so you would find 11 | 16 or
24 | 32 in those two columns. That *will* come across.

But once you get the data into Word, you would then have the problem of
converting the text data back into formatted fractions. Since Word
doesn't
HAVE formatted fractions, this involves an Equation field.

Look up the Help for the EQ field. For example, { EQ \f(11,16) } will
display:
11
___
16

So if you had {EQ \f({ MERGEFIELD numerator },{MERGEFIELD denominator } }
in
your main document, it might work. You would have to format the font to
be
small enough so that it would not look silly (start with half the point
size
of the surrounding text).

I am sorry, I cannot remember whether the Data Merge operation passes
field
codes from the Main Document to the Output Document. I suspect it
doesn't.
If that is the case, you need to bring the EQ field into the output
document
as text. In other words, "type" the OUTER set of curly braces in the Main
document.

Then complete your merge and run a macro to convert the typed EQ fields
into
"real" EQ fields. This is, barely, possible. But it's weeks of
programming
unless you know AppleScript *really* well. If you are interested in this
approach, get back to us here. If I hunt around, I think I have a VBA
example that creates fields from plain text. But be warned, this is *not*
a
simple operation. At least, it wasn't for me :-)

Sorry!

On 18/3/06 9:57 PM, in article , "Kerry
O'Shannessy" wrote:

Using Excel as Data source, when I merge data to word, I loose my
formatted
fractions. No explicit Field switches that I can see for setting
fractions.

Program has been working fine on a PC. Have been using Office 95 but
after
researching Macintosh, decided to upgrade in this direction.

And Yes, no Fractions is a problem. There must be a way, can somebody
help.

Mike



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410



  #3   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
Paul Berkowitz
 
Posts: n/a
Default Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

I suspect that none of this is necessary.

Instead, make your fractions in Excel using the Character Palette. If you're
not familiar with this, go to System Preferences/International/Input Menu
and enable (check) the Character Palette, in Tiger. In Panther, there's a
simple checkbox "Character Palette". In both cases check "Show Input menu in
menu bar" at the bottom. (In Jaguar this was called the Keyboard Menu). Now
you'll see a flag in the main menu bar representing your active language. In
that menu is "Show Character Palette". It appears floating over every app.

In Word, go to the Character Palette. In Tiger, make sure it's set to
Unicode. View Code Tables. (In Panther that's how it's set by default.)

You'll find ΒΌ, Β½, ΒΎ (1/4, 1/2, 3/4) in Latin-1 Supplement at 00BC, 00BD,
00BE. (I've included the versions with "/" here because when those of you in
Windows reply the real fractions may get changed if your newsreader doesn't
honor the ISO-8859-1 character format and insists on sending as us-ascii.)

There are a few more built-in fractions in Number Forms, 2153-215E .

But the best way to do any fraction is to use the (combining) FRACTION
SLASH, Unicode 2044, along with superscripts and subscripts:

ΒΉ„‚ƒ , ΅„‚†, Ά·„‚‚‚ƒ‚„

(1/3, 5/6). These look much better in Excel and Word than they do (here) in
Entourage plain text . YMMV for email and news, particularly if your
newsreader can't do Unicode. Superscript 1, 2, 3 are in Latin-1 Supplement
00B0-00B9, the rest in Superscripts and Subscripts 2070-2089.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html
AppleScripts for Entourage: http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.


From: Peter Jamieson
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public. word.mailmerge.fields
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:50:17 -0000
Subject: Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a "fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.


As far as I can tell (Ii'm not a regular Mac Word user) this is correct, at
least in Mac Office 2004 on MacOSX. In Word 95 using the default connection
method (DDE) the characters seen in the Excel sheet would have come across,
i.e. if you entered 1/2, you would see 1/2. If you are able to add
formatting in Excel to make 1/2 look like
1
_
2
that won't come across in any version of Word as far as I know - In that
case, you could try
a. copying/pasting the Excel data into Word (this probably won't work if
you have more than 63 or 64 columns)
b. using that Word document as the data source
c. if your fraction column is called "fraction", use { REF fraction }
instead of { MERGEFIELD fraction } in the mail merge main document. This is
an undocumented feature so it would be unwise to rely too much on it, but it
does appear to work in Mac Word as well as the Windows version.

If you just need 1/2, 1/3 etc. you can either
a. use two columns as John suggests and use
{ MERGEFIELD numerator }/{MERGEFIELD denominator }
in your mail merge main document or
b. format the column as text in Excel - if you try to format the existing
column, Excel will just convert the fractions, but if you re-enter the
values, they should "stick". You may also be able to use a formula to
reference the fraction data from a column formatted as text.

John's suggestion for formatting using an EQ field should work because the
EQ field /is/ preserved in the output, at least if you merge to a new
document. When using EQ fields it is worth bearing two things in mind:
a. EQ was "deprecated" a long time ago. It may have been reprieved since,
but if for example you double-click on an EQ field, Word will convert it
into an Equation Editor field or the Mac equivalent, and this will change
the formatting
b. unlike most other field types, white space inside the closing brace of
an EQ field is significant, and will result in white space in your output.

If you do end up typing in separate numerators/denominators or fractions in
cells formatted as text, bear in mind that Excel will allow 2/4, whereas in
a field formatted as a fraction, it will convert that to 1/2.

Peter Jamieson

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" wrote in
message ...
Hi Kerry:

The simplest thing I can suggest is "convert your fractions to decimals".

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a "fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.

I hope I am wrong: I have cross-posted this message to the group that
specialises in Data Merge, so check back on Monday to see if anyone knows
how to do this. Data Merge is a specialist area! And we need to be aware
that the advanced VBA functions they have on the PC to deal with these
sorts
of things are not available in Mac Word. (It's Word 97-level VBA,
guys...)

So, somehow you have to represent your data in a form that can be
described
in plain text.

What you "could" do is add two columns in Excel that expresses the
fractions
numerator and denominator as plain text: so you would find 11 | 16 or
24 | 32 in those two columns. That *will* come across.

But once you get the data into Word, you would then have the problem of
converting the text data back into formatted fractions. Since Word
doesn't
HAVE formatted fractions, this involves an Equation field.

Look up the Help for the EQ field. For example, { EQ \f(11,16) } will
display:
11
___
16

So if you had {EQ \f({ MERGEFIELD numerator },{MERGEFIELD denominator } }
in
your main document, it might work. You would have to format the font to
be
small enough so that it would not look silly (start with half the point
size
of the surrounding text).

I am sorry, I cannot remember whether the Data Merge operation passes
field
codes from the Main Document to the Output Document. I suspect it
doesn't.
If that is the case, you need to bring the EQ field into the output
document
as text. In other words, "type" the OUTER set of curly braces in the Main
document.

Then complete your merge and run a macro to convert the typed EQ fields
into
"real" EQ fields. This is, barely, possible. But it's weeks of
programming
unless you know AppleScript *really* well. If you are interested in this
approach, get back to us here. If I hunt around, I think I have a VBA
example that creates fields from plain text. But be warned, this is *not*
a
simple operation. At least, it wasn't for me :-)

Sorry!

On 18/3/06 9:57 PM, in article , "Kerry
O'Shannessy" wrote:

Using Excel as Data source, when I merge data to word, I loose my
formatted
fractions. No explicit Field switches that I can see for setting
fractions.

Program has been working fine on a PC. Have been using Office 95 but
after
researching Macintosh, decided to upgrade in this direction.

And Yes, no Fractions is a problem. There must be a way, can somebody
help.

Mike



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410




  #4   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
Peter Jamieson
 
Posts: n/a
Default Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Here, I wasn't able to get even the stock fractions such as 1/2 across from
Excel when it is being used as a data merge source (it looks as if Mac
Word/Excel suffers from a similar problem with character encoding as Windows
Word/Excel prior to OLEDB connections) but
a. maybe it's a question of choosing the correct fonts or some other Mac
Word/Excel/Office option of which I'm unaware
b. the approach where you copy/paste the Excel sheet into Word then use
that as the data source will probably work

(Sorry, I don't have time to check as I'm away for a while).

Peter Jamieson
"Paul Berkowitz" wrote in message
...
I suspect that none of this is necessary.

Instead, make your fractions in Excel using the Character Palette. If
you're
not familiar with this, go to System Preferences/International/Input Menu
and enable (check) the Character Palette, in Tiger. In Panther, there's a
simple checkbox "Character Palette". In both cases check "Show Input menu
in
menu bar" at the bottom. (In Jaguar this was called the Keyboard Menu).
Now
you'll see a flag in the main menu bar representing your active language.
In
that menu is "Show Character Palette". It appears floating over every app.

In Word, go to the Character Palette. In Tiger, make sure it's set to
Unicode. View Code Tables. (In Panther that's how it's set by default.)

You'll find Ό, ½, Ύ (1/4, 1/2, 3/4) in Latin-1 Supplement at 00BC, 00BD,
00BE. (I've included the versions with "/" here because when those of you
in
Windows reply the real fractions may get changed if your newsreader
doesn't
honor the ISO-8859-1 character format and insists on sending as us-ascii.)

There are a few more built-in fractions in Number Forms, 2153-215E .

But the best way to do any fraction is to use the (combining) FRACTION
SLASH, Unicode 2044, along with superscripts and subscripts:

Ή?? , ???, ??????

(1/3, 5/6). These look much better in Excel and Word than they do (here)
in
Entourage plain text . YMMV for email and news, particularly if your
newsreader can't do Unicode. Superscript 1, 2, 3 are in Latin-1 Supplement
00B0-00B9, the rest in Superscripts and Subscripts 2070-2089.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html
AppleScripts for Entourage: http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.


From: Peter Jamieson
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public. word.mailmerge.fields
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:50:17 -0000
Subject: Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding
of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a
"fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.


As far as I can tell (Ii'm not a regular Mac Word user) this is correct,
at
least in Mac Office 2004 on MacOSX. In Word 95 using the default
connection
method (DDE) the characters seen in the Excel sheet would have come
across,
i.e. if you entered 1/2, you would see 1/2. If you are able to add
formatting in Excel to make 1/2 look like
1
_
2
that won't come across in any version of Word as far as I know - In that
case, you could try
a. copying/pasting the Excel data into Word (this probably won't work if
you have more than 63 or 64 columns)
b. using that Word document as the data source
c. if your fraction column is called "fraction", use { REF fraction }
instead of { MERGEFIELD fraction } in the mail merge main document. This
is
an undocumented feature so it would be unwise to rely too much on it, but
it
does appear to work in Mac Word as well as the Windows version.

If you just need 1/2, 1/3 etc. you can either
a. use two columns as John suggests and use
{ MERGEFIELD numerator }/{MERGEFIELD denominator }
in your mail merge main document or
b. format the column as text in Excel - if you try to format the
existing
column, Excel will just convert the fractions, but if you re-enter the
values, they should "stick". You may also be able to use a formula to
reference the fraction data from a column formatted as text.

John's suggestion for formatting using an EQ field should work because
the
EQ field /is/ preserved in the output, at least if you merge to a new
document. When using EQ fields it is worth bearing two things in mind:
a. EQ was "deprecated" a long time ago. It may have been reprieved
since,
but if for example you double-click on an EQ field, Word will convert it
into an Equation Editor field or the Mac equivalent, and this will change
the formatting
b. unlike most other field types, white space inside the closing brace
of
an EQ field is significant, and will result in white space in your
output.

If you do end up typing in separate numerators/denominators or fractions
in
cells formatted as text, bear in mind that Excel will allow 2/4, whereas
in
a field formatted as a fraction, it will convert that to 1/2.

Peter Jamieson

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" wrote in
message ...
Hi Kerry:

The simplest thing I can suggest is "convert your fractions to
decimals".

Let me preface that by saying that I have never attempted to bring
formatted
fractions from Excel to Word in Data Merge. However, my understanding
of
the problem is that Data Merge sends data from source to destination as
plain text. Formatting is stripped, and Word does not have a
"fractions"
numeric picture switch like Excel does, so there is no way to get them
from
Excel to Word.

I hope I am wrong: I have cross-posted this message to the group that
specialises in Data Merge, so check back on Monday to see if anyone
knows
how to do this. Data Merge is a specialist area! And we need to be
aware
that the advanced VBA functions they have on the PC to deal with these
sorts
of things are not available in Mac Word. (It's Word 97-level VBA,
guys...)

So, somehow you have to represent your data in a form that can be
described
in plain text.

What you "could" do is add two columns in Excel that expresses the
fractions
numerator and denominator as plain text: so you would find 11 | 16 or
24 | 32 in those two columns. That *will* come across.

But once you get the data into Word, you would then have the problem of
converting the text data back into formatted fractions. Since Word
doesn't
HAVE formatted fractions, this involves an Equation field.

Look up the Help for the EQ field. For example, { EQ \f(11,16) } will
display:
11
___
16

So if you had {EQ \f({ MERGEFIELD numerator },{MERGEFIELD
denominator } }
in
your main document, it might work. You would have to format the font to
be
small enough so that it would not look silly (start with half the point
size
of the surrounding text).

I am sorry, I cannot remember whether the Data Merge operation passes
field
codes from the Main Document to the Output Document. I suspect it
doesn't.
If that is the case, you need to bring the EQ field into the output
document
as text. In other words, "type" the OUTER set of curly braces in the
Main
document.

Then complete your merge and run a macro to convert the typed EQ fields
into
"real" EQ fields. This is, barely, possible. But it's weeks of
programming
unless you know AppleScript *really* well. If you are interested in
this
approach, get back to us here. If I hunt around, I think I have a VBA
example that creates fields from plain text. But be warned, this is
*not*
a
simple operation. At least, it wasn't for me :-)

Sorry!

On 18/3/06 9:57 PM, in article , "Kerry
O'Shannessy" wrote:

Using Excel as Data source, when I merge data to word, I loose my
formatted
fractions. No explicit Field switches that I can see for setting
fractions.

Program has been working fine on a PC. Have been using Office 95 but
after
researching Macintosh, decided to upgrade in this direction.

And Yes, no Fractions is a problem. There must be a way, can somebody
help.

Mike


--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410






  #5   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.mac.office.word,microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
 
Posts: n/a
Default Format Fractions in Mail Merge.

Hi Paul:

In the poster's case, I believe the problem is that the characters are "not
there" to be brought across.

In Excel, FormatCellFractions produces a "generated display" of integers
and fractions. The underlying "value" is still a decimal fraction.

I *was* rather hoping that J.E. Would pay us a visit with an algorithm to
convert decimals to fractions.

Ah hah! Here it is: you have to load the Analysis Toolpack, which is an
optional install so you may have to install it from your Office CD. The
DOLLARFR function converts decimal values to fractional representations.
The syntax for DOLLARFR is:

=DOLLARFR(value,fraction)

where value is the value to convert to decimal, and fraction is the
fractional base. So, assuming the value is in cell D2, the Integer is
=IF(D20, TRUNC(DOLLARFR(D2,16)),0) and if the Integer is in E2 the
Numerator is =IF(D20, (DOLLARFR(D2,16)-E2),0). The IF statement is needed
only if there's a chance the value could be zero or less: the DOLLARFR
function will blow up if it does. Stocks, of course, can't go negative
(fortunately...)

Simple.... It's OK John, we don't need you now, got it thanks... :-)

DOLLARFR requires you to "know" what the Denominator is. Assuming it's
stock prices we're talking about here, you do know this: stocks used to
trade in either quarters, eighths, 16ths or 32nds, and you had to "know"
which unit each one used. The NYSE went all-decimal on Jan 29, 2001, so we
won't have to do this for much longer :-)

But Paul's right: if the poster wants to go to the trouble of constructing
the fractions manually, the fraction slash would work too.

Regrettably, the superscript/subscript will not come across, that will have
to be applied in the Word Main Document. Data Merge brings across string
data, but no formatting. I "hope" it's a Unicode string, but I have not
confirmed that. It may be ANSI, and if it is, the fraction slash won't come
across either. But using the formula above, you get the integer and the
fraction in separate cells. You can bring them into the merge
independently, and include the Fraction Slash character and the Super/Sub
formatting in the Main Document.

Cheers

On 19/3/06 3:24 PM, in article ,
"Paul Berkowitz" wrote:

I suspect that none of this is necessary.

Instead, make your fractions in Excel using the Character Palette. If you're
not familiar with this, go to System Preferences/International/Input Menu
and enable (check) the Character Palette, in Tiger. In Panther, there's a
simple checkbox "Character Palette". In both cases check "Show Input menu in
menu bar" at the bottom. (In Jaguar this was called the Keyboard Menu). Now
you'll see a flag in the main menu bar representing your active language. In
that menu is "Show Character Palette". It appears floating over every app.

In Word, go to the Character Palette. In Tiger, make sure it's set to
Unicode. View Code Tables. (In Panther that's how it's set by default.)

You'll find ΒΌ, Β½, ΒΎ (1/4, 1/2, 3/4) in Latin-1 Supplement at 00BC, 00BD,
00BE. (I've included the versions with "/" here because when those of you in
Windows reply the real fractions may get changed if your newsreader doesn't
honor the ISO-8859-1 character format and insists on sending as us-ascii.)

There are a few more built-in fractions in Number Forms, 2153-215E .

But the best way to do any fraction is to use the (combining) FRACTION
SLASH, Unicode 2044, along with superscripts and subscripts:

ΒΉ„‚ƒ , ΅„‚†, Ά·„‚‚‚ƒ‚„

(1/3, 5/6). These look much better in Excel and Word than they do (here) in
Entourage plain text . YMMV for email and news, particularly if your
newsreader can't do Unicode. Superscript 1, 2, 3 are in Latin-1 Supplement
00B0-00B9, the rest in Superscripts and Subscripts 2070-2089.


--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

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