Mail Merge: Issue with number formatting (ssn)

[Woelfe]

Greetings all!

I'm having an issue doing a mail merge that I can't figure out how to get around. This may be more of a MS Word question, but I couldn't find a good forum available to ask the question.

I exported some data from our system into an excel sheet, SSN and names of students. I converted the SSN to number and applied the special formatting for social security to show the dashes. The appearance is fine in Excel, but when I merge the data to make labels in MS Word the number is losing the formatting and showing a string of 9 numbers with no dashes.

I couldn't find a setting in Word to affect the merge field. Does anyone know how I can keep the formatting or adjust it in Word to represent a social security number?

Many thanks in advance!

Woelfe

 

[Norie]

Woelfe

There is a setting in Word for formatting mail merge fields.

Try searching help for information on switches.

 

[Woelfe]

Norie,

Thank you so much! I found the section on switches and discovered a lot of additional ways to format.

{MERGEFIELD student_ssn\# ###'-'##'-'####}

This is what I used to format it so that the dashes showed up as they should in case anyone else stumbles across this post.

Thanks again Norie!

Woelfe

 

[crbaker3]

Norie,

Thank you so much! I found the section on switches and discovered a lot of additional ways to format.

{MERGEFIELD student_ssn\# ###'-'##'-'####}

This is what I used to format it so that the dashes showed up as they should in case anyone else stumbles across this post.

Thanks again Norie!

Woelfe

19 years later, this is still relevant and solved my problem. Thank you!