Date Format with Word 2007 mail merge

[mike142sl]

I'm having trouble displaying dates as per the windows regional settings i have set on my laptop when I use mail merge.

I'm set up as per UK settings so when using every programme inc Outlook, Excel, Word, dates display as DD/MM/YYYY, however when ever I merge dates into a Word doc they display as MM/DD/YYYY

Does anyone know how I can get this to display as per my regional setting?

Thanks

Mike

 

[TrainableMan]

I found this from on the web from 2004 regarding the date issue ...
http://happyelearning.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=225477
I am not familiar with mail merge myself so this may be worthless to you but as it hasn't gotten any replies I offer that your solution may be similar except you would probably use [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"date" \@"dd/mm/yyyy"[/FONT]

 

[mike142sl]

Thanks

Thanks TrainableMan, that is the answer. I've just made the change in my document and it works. (I'm using Office 2007)

To complete this thread for anyone else who has found it the solution is:

1. All you need to do is add some extra code to change the formatting. Presuming your original table field is called 'Date', the merge field will currently be {MERGEFIELD "date"}
2. To change the mailmerge date field format you need to change the relavent merge field by changing the view to show the field codes.
3. To do this right click on the merge field and select toggle field codes.
4. You need to add the following formatting data \@"dd MMMM yyyy"
5. So your field will now look like this {MERGEFIELD "date"\@"dd MMMM yyyy"}
6. Note: you may need to add " marks before and after the table field as well and the code is case sensitive, so putting mmmm will not work.
7. Right click the file again to revert to the field name view. When you preview the document you will see that dates are now formatted in the long date format.

Hope it helps

 

[mike142sl]

Now that I know what I've been looking for, I've also found this page which gives info about other options for changing Field Switches

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

 

[Lucky101]

Thanks TrainableMan, that is the answer. I've just made the change in my document and it works. (I'm using Office 2007)

To complete this thread for anyone else who has found it the solution is:

1. All you need to do is add some extra code to change the formatting. Presuming your original table field is called 'Date', the merge field will currently be {MERGEFIELD "date"}
2. To change the mailmerge date field format you need to change the relavent merge field by changing the view to show the field codes.
3. To do this right click on the merge field and select toggle field codes.
4. You need to add the following formatting data \@"dd MMMM yyyy"
5. So your field will now look like this {MERGEFIELD "date"\@"dd MMMM yyyy"}
6. Note: you may need to add " marks before and after the table field as well and the code is case sensitive, so putting mmmm will not work.
7. Right click the file again to revert to the field name view. When you preview the document you will see that dates are now formatted in the long date format.

Hope it helps

Unfortunately this doesn't work if the original date is not in American format!
I have already tried this on raw data for the October date of 07-10-12 and Word converts this into 10 July 2012. Any ideas how to fix this? Windows is set with the UK date format and Word default language is set as English (United Kingdom).

 

[theivanka]

Unfortunately this doesn't work if the original date is not in American format!
I have already tried this on raw data for the October date of 07-10-12 and Word converts this into 10 July 2012. Any ideas how to fix this? Windows is set with the UK date format and Word default language is set as English (United Kingdom).

I have managed to use the appropriate raw data format by following your instructions and using the preserve format across updates options. So, my merged field looks like this:
MERGEFIELD date \@ "dd.MM.yyyy" * MERGEFORMAT


Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. Niels Bohr[/SIZE]