When I merge an excel document with a word document, the first column is
formatted as a text field. When the documents are merged, the final document
converst the text to numeric and prints out a 0.

You did not really give us much to go on. What sort of data is in the
field?

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

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

You could also go to the Tools menu in Word and select Options and go to the
General tab and check the box against the "Confirm conversions at open" item
and then try the different methods of connecting to the data source that
will be presented when you attach the data source to the main document. One
of the methods (probably DDE) may overcome your problem.


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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Bob" wrote in message
...
When I merge an excel document with a word document, the first column is
formatted as a text field. When the documents are merged, the final
document
converst the text to numeric and prints out a 0.