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Mail Merge with .csv file type 1

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ConWoman

Technical User
Oct 26, 2003
5
CA
I'm having a problem trying to do a mail merge on Word XP. My problem was with
currency (want $3.00) and a specific date format (28-Oct-03). That was solved with your recommendation of converting my .xls file to .csv however this created a new annoyance. Not all my fields are populated in .xls so when I try to merge in my .csv file, a popup message comes up "Every" time one row has fewer data than another.

Is there a way I can turn off this popup message? This occurs in both .csv and when I try a Tab delimited .txt file.

Thanks in advance.
 
Who toldya to save as csv (groan)? Okay, maybe a dirty workaround, but go back to Excel as your source file.

Now, open your Word main doc (that's hooked to the Excel file again). Hit the ABC button on the mail merge toolbar so you can see the bad date format (for instance).

Now, hit Alt+F9 so you can see the CODE behind that bad date field.

It'll say something like

{MERGEFIELD StartDate}

Change it to:

{MERGEFIELD StartDate \@ "dd-MMM-yy" }


Here's a link with some good examples:

Anne Troy
 
Thanks Dreamboat,
your advice worked great and is exactly what I wanted. I always used the .xls format for my mail merges and only saved it to a .csv to get around this date format issue and
currency issue, but your solution solved both.

Actually the "save as .csv" advice came from this site. It was a question asked by Wizdar which was answered by Gaz123.
 
LOL Sound like men to me. Whatchoo think? LOL

I'm just joking. We all try to help the best we can. I've found people coming into my Qs and telling people a much easier way than I just gave, groan, then smile, cause I just learned something new.

:D

Very happy to help!

Anne Troy
 
LOL... funny. I like your sense of humor!

I don't know about any "easier" solutions, but if your referring to my problem, don't go the .csv route. That just created a new and additional problem with the popup message for "every" row that was missing data in a cell. Very annoying because you had to click a button for the popup to go away and there was no escaping this without ctrl-alt-delete! This is a problem if your datafile is large (500 - 1000 records) weekly.

So, I like your solution much better!! Keep up the good advice!

Connie
 
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