Merge Formats

[Michael J. Malinsky]

If you have a phone number typed into Excel such as 18005551212 and use an
Excel format, then Word only picks up the number, not the formatting. If
your Excel value was 1-800-555-1212, then Word would pick up that exact
thing.

When you do formatting in Excel, it does not affect the underlying data,
just the way in which it appears on the worksheet. You can try to use a
field switch in your merge field. To do this, you would have to toggle the
field code so you can see the code rather than the result. Just inside the
right bracket insert *\ 000-000-0000 (or something like that) and maybe the
field code will format the merged data properly. If that's not the right
answer, pop on over to the Word NGs or check out Word help and search for
field codes.

HTH


--
Michael J. Malinsky
Pittsburgh, PA

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly,
and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain

 

[caroline]

I am trying to merge information from excel to word. The
phone number format is not merging through to the word
document. Help.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Debra Dalgleish posted this for a different question, but I bet you could modify
it for phone numbers:



In the Mail Merge, after you select your Excel file as a data source,
you should see a 'Confirm Data Source' dialog box.
(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')

From that list, choose 'MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls)', and your
formatting will be retained.

If you have to 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 number. It will look something like:
{ MERGEFIELD FieldName }
3. Add a switch, to format the number with two decimal places.
For example:
{ MERGEFIELD FieldName \# "#,##0.00" }
4. Press Alt+F9 to hide the field codes.
5. Save the Main Document


=======
And David McRichie usually posts a followup:
use a helper column in excel and make the zipcodes text and use that in your
import:

=text(a1,"00000")