If this used to work, and only changed it's behaviour yesterday and that was
not associated with anything else, then you must have changed the method of
connecting to the database. You can control that in Word by checking the
"Confirm conversions at Open" item under the Tools>Options>General dialog.
Alternatively, use the Format() function in an Access query to control the
formatting of the output and use that query as the data source for the mail
merge.
The mask on your Access form has no impact on how the information is stored
in Access.

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Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.
Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
> Hello:
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Until yesterday the date fields worked fine, if the date field was populated in Access then the appropriate date would come up next to the
name. If there was no name or date, then the rows were blank - which is what
I wanted and what happend.
> Suddenly the blank date fields would come up as
> 12:00:00 AM
> while the blank name fields remained blank as they should.
>
> Unfortunately I've changed nothing in the template and the table fields as well as the controls on the form, which respectively retain and obtain the
dates are set with an input mask
> 00/00/0000;;_
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> thanks,
> pepenacho
pepenacho - 01 Jul 2004 03:35 GMT
Great, thanks Doug.
pepe
> If this used to work, and only changed it's behaviour yesterday and that was
> not associated with anything else, then you must have changed the method of
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> The mask on your Access form has no impact on how the information is stored
> in Access.