{"id":311,"date":"2008-10-03T10:15:37","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T10:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkesy.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/"},"modified":"2008-10-03T10:15:37","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T10:15:37","slug":"date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Date formats incorrect after mail merge using Word 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked to look at something by a friend yesterday<\/p>\n<p>She was doing a mail merge using Word 2007 with an Excel spreadsheet as the data source<\/p>\n<p>One of the fields was a date and was in the British DD\/MM\/YY format on the spreadsheet but when she did the merge it was in the US MM\/DD\/YY format (It also had the time on the end as well)<\/p>\n<p>My initial thought was that I just needed to tell Word to change the format of the merge field but couldn\u2019t see anywhere on the mailings tab to do that<\/p>\n<p>Then I found this KB article<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/kb\/304387\/en-us\">304387 &#8211; Date, Phone Number, and Currency fields are merged incorrectly when you use an Access or Excel data source in Word<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Basically the underlying data source stores the date as a number and applies what ever formatting you need (if you have any Excel experience this wont be a shock!)<\/p>\n<p>So when it get\u2019s passed through to Word for use in the merge it then applies it\u2019s own formatting<\/p>\n<p>To change the formatting do the following<\/p>\n<p>Find the merge field you want to change and right click it. Then click the \u201cToggle Field Codes\u201d option<\/p>\n<p>It should change it so it looks something like this (if the merge field is called \u201cBirthday\u201d)<\/p>\n<p><b>{MERGEFIELD Birthday }<\/b><\/p>\n<p>You then have to change the field to tell it you want a specific date format<\/p>\n<p><b>{MERGEFIELD Birthday <\/b><b>\\@ &quot;dd\/MM\/yy&quot; }<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The case is really important here<\/p>\n<p><strong>M<\/strong> means \u201cmonth\u201d whereas&#160; <strong>m<\/strong> means \u201cminute\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can tweak the format as you need for example \u201cdddd dd MMMM yyywy\u201d would give you <em>Friday 3 October 2008<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve tried this in Word 2007 but the KB article says it applies to Word 2003 as well<\/p>\n<p>The KB article also points out how can change currently and phone numbers using the same technique<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked to look at something by a friend yesterday She was doing a mail merge using Word 2007 with an Excel spreadsheet as the data source One of the fields was a date and was in the British DD\/MM\/YY format on the spreadsheet but when she did the merge it was in the<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/\"><span class=\"arrow-right icon\"><\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.11 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Date formats incorrect after mail merge using Word 2007 - Andy&#039;s Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Date formats incorrect after mail merge using Word 2007 - Andy&#039;s Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was asked to look at something by a friend yesterday She was doing a mail merge using Word 2007 with an Excel spreadsheet as the data source One of the fields was a date and was in the British DD\/MM\/YY format on the spreadsheet but when she did the merge it was in theRead More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Andy&#039;s Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-03T10:15:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/03\/date-formats-incorrect-after-mail-merge-using-word-2007\/\",\"name\":\"Date formats incorrect after mail merge using Word 2007 - 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