You should be able to copy in Excel, and paste into Word, and retain the
formatting.
If you're using Excel data in a mail merge, you may lose some
formatting, for example zip codes may lose the leading zero.
If that's the problem that you're encountering, try the following:
After you select your Excel file as a data source, you should see a
'Confirm Data Source' dialog box. From that list, choose 'MS Excel
Worksheets via DDE (*.xls)', and your formatting will be retained.
(If you don't see the dialog box, change the setting in Word --
under Tools>Options, General -- add a check mark to
'Confirm Conversion at Open')
If you connect through a different source, you can format the fields in
the Word document. For example, to specify a number of decimals:
1. In Word, in the Main Document, press Alt+F9 to view the field codes.
2. Find the field code for the zip code. It will look something like:
{ MERGEFIELD "Zip" }
3. Add a switch, to format the number. For example:
{ MERGEFIELD "Zip" \# "00000" }
4. Press Alt+F9 to hide the field codes.
5. Save the Main Document
