Word merge from Excel   

Hi

We are trying to do a merge from Excel to Word in Office 2003.  The date
format we need is DD/MM/YYYY.  In Excel it displays correctly, but as soon
as you merge to word, it swops the format around to MM/DD/YYYY.  It also
swops the format around in the Excel file at that point. We have checked the
regional settings and everything is correct.

Has anyone got any ideas???

Thanks

--
Patsy Rogge

date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:41:09 +0200   author:   Patsy Rogge

Re: Word merge from Excel   

There are at least two possible problems here:
 a. Using the default connection type in Word 2003 mailmerge (OLEDB), Word 
does not automatically use your regional settings: you will have to format 
your merge field in Word using a date format switch, e.g. change

{ MERGEFIELD mydate \*Mergeformat }

to

{ MERGEFIELD mydate \@DD/MM/YYYY \*Mergeformat }

(or change to the DDE connection method, which requires you to have Excel on 
the system). See also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304387

 b. There is a problem in the OLEDB provider which may mean that even when 
you do this, Word may get the day and month the wrong way around. In fact, 
you may find that sometimes it gets it the right way, and sometimes the 
wrong way, depending on whether the day number is also a valid month number. 
There's a KB article about this at

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327579

but it is really to do with Word 2002.

> It also
> swops the format around in the Excel file at that point.

That's odd. I haven't seen that before. Is that definitely the case?

Peter Jamieson

"Patsy Rogge"  wrote in message 
news:es$22K4ZGHA.4580@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Hi
>
> We are trying to do a merge from Excel to Word in Office 2003.  The date
> format we need is DD/MM/YYYY.  In Excel it displays correctly, but as soon
> as you merge to word, it swops the format around to MM/DD/YYYY.  It also
> swops the format around in the Excel file at that point. We have checked 
> the
> regional settings and everything is correct.
>
> Has anyone got any ideas???
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Patsy Rogge
>
>
>

date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:35:55 +0100   author:   Peter Jamieson