Mail Merge Date field issue in Excel 1

[erikhertzel]

I have an excel spreadsheet that has a field of Date

So, Column A is
5/15/2006
6/15/2008

etc...

Anyhow, the dates exported from an external source and in excel show up like above but if you click on them it's showing the full date and timestamp.

I need to do a mail merge in Word, and it's pulling in the timestamp as well, which I don't want.

How can I strip this time stamp out of Excel so the mail merge only has the date?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[erikhertzel]

Never mind, I figured it out that I could fix it in Word using the Shift-F9 function. Thanks!

 

[macropod]

Hi erik,

For the benefit of others, it would have been useful if you'd said what you did via Shift-F9.

I surmise you added/modified a date/time switch.

For anyone else reading this thread, to get the date format you want, you can add a formatting picture switch. In Word:
. select the mergefield;
. press Shift-F9 to expose the field coding. It should look something like {MERGEFIELD MyDate} where 'MyDate' is your mergefield's name;
. delete anything appearing after the mergefield's name and add '\@ "d MMMM yyyy"' to the field, as in {MERGEFIELD MyDate \@ "d MMMM yyyy"}. With this switch your date will come out as '2 August 2008'. Other possible date formatting switches include:
. \@ "dddd, d MMMM yyyy"};
. \@ "ddd, d MMMM yyyy"};
. \@ "d MMM yyyy"};
. \@ "dd/MMM/yyyy"};
. \@ "d-MM-yy"};
Note: you must use uppercase Ms for months. You can add 'hh:mm:ss' (lowercase ms for minutes) also if you want for time data - provided your data source has those values.
. position the cursor anywhere in this field and press F9 to update it;
. run your mailmerge.

Cheers


[MS MVP - Word]

 

[GSCaupling]

Macropod,

Many thanks - that happens to be a very timely (no pun intended) tutorial for me!

GS

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[red]I think of the word processor as the pen's e-quill.[/red]

 

[SkipVought]

FYI...

faq68-5827

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