Mailmerge problem XL to word 2002

[lionelnz]

Good morning all. (I thought I had submitted this problem earlier but cannot see it on the board or thru my stats!!!!)

I am using Office 2002 on Xp Prof SP3 and for some reason dates are not being formatted correctly in Word from XL database/Table.

For example I have the date formatted in Xl as 11/01/2010 (dd/mm/yyyy) and I can mailmerge the date exactly as that but when I use the advanced field editing mode e.g. PRINTDATE \@ " d MMMM yyyy" to try and produce 11 January 2010 I get this 15 February 2009.

I am getting frustrated as I do not know what to do except to use advanced formulas or VBA to produce the date formats as text & use that to import the date as text.

I have set my regional language settings in XP for NZ & I have also set both word & XL for NZ settings. It is only when I use the query tool that the formats get altered.

Any help appreciated

Lionel Downunda

 

[SydneyGeek]

Helen Feddema (who has written a book on this) always pushes dates, currency and numbers to Word as text, then uses the field codes for formatting.
You will have fewer issues if you do the same.

Denis

 

[Macropod]

Hi Lionel,

when I use the advanced field editing mode e.g. PRINTDATE \@ " d MMMM yyyy" to try and produce 11 January 2010 I get this 15 February 2009.

The '15 February 2009' represents the date on which the mailmerge main document was last printed. In the mailmerge output file, it should update when that file gets printed.

Denis:
It isn't a MERGEFIELD and, so, really doesn't have anything to do with the Excel data source.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Paul, thanks -- I skimmed the field name and didn't realise that it was system-generated.

Denis

 

[lionelnz]

Solved - Re: Mailmerge problem XL to word 2002

I finally realised what I was doing wrong!!!!

This how to format dates from Excel (& probably access too) to Word.

Formatting dates:
1. right click on the field name e.g. > - see pop-up menu.
2. click on the ‘Toggle Field Codes’ option - see field expand e.g. {
MERGEFIELD “Date” }
3. edit the field to include \@ “dd MMMM yy” e.g. { MERGEFIELD “Date
\@ “dd MMMM yyyy” } (or what ever format).
4. preview your mail merge - see date in the format 1 April 2005.

So This is what i should have had for my field formatting -
19 January 2010
{MERGEFIELD Date_Appl \@ " d MMMM yyyy"}

Instead of

PRINTDATE \@ " d MMMM yyyy" to try and produce 11 January 2010 I get this 15 February 2009.