Word Mailmerge reading UK dates in Access as US dates

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Curious of Barnet - 11 Mar 2005 10:17 GMT

I have an Access Database which contains a date field, formatted as a UK
date, i.e. dd/mm/yy hh:mm. When I use the Word mailmerge facility to pull in
information about an overdue book loan the date is read by word as being in
US format, i.e. mm/dd/yy hh:mm, so that 5th November 2003 is printed in the
mailmerge as 11th May 2003. How do I make Mailmerge read the date correctly?

Reply to this Message

Dawn - 11 Mar 2005 17:31 GMT

When you are in Word, right click on the date filed and select edit field.
Click on Field codes, and where you MERGEFIELD Date(or whatever you named the
field) type
\@ dd/MM/yyyy

You need to use capital "M", this way Word knows you mean months instead of
minutes.

Hope this helps.

> I have an Access Database which contains a date field, formatted as a UK
> date, i.e. dd/mm/yy hh:mm. When I use the Word mailmerge facility to pull in
> information about an overdue book loan the date is read by word as being in
> US format, i.e. mm/dd/yy hh:mm, so that 5th November 2003 is printed in the
> mailmerge as 11th May 2003. How do I make Mailmerge read the date correctly?

Reply to this Message

Curious of Barnet - 10 Apr 2005 12:29 GMT

Thanks, but ...

Doesn't solve the problem; I was already doing that.

The problem occurs on the network of the school I work in but not at home.
At school it only happens with a date that has the day <= 12. If the day >
12 in the original Access file, it does not happen.

> When you are in Word, right click on the date filed and select edit field.
> Click on Field codes, and where you MERGEFIELD Date(or whatever you named the
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> > US format, i.e. mm/dd/yy hh:mm, so that 5th November 2003 is printed in the
> > mailmerge as 11th May 2003. How do I make Mailmerge read the date correctly?

Reply to this Message

Doug Robbins - 10 Apr 2005 15:37 GMT

See the "Dates: day/month reversed" item under the "Connection methods"
topic of the "Mail merge in Word 2002" section of fellow MVP Cindy
Meister's website at
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MergFram.htm

Signature

Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

> Thanks, but ...
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
>> > mailmerge as 11th May 2003. How do I make Mailmerge read the date
>> > correctly?

Reply to this Message

Curious of Barnet - 18 Apr 2005 00:36 GMT

Thanks, Doug, you are a gentleman and a scholar. I suspected all along that
it was a bug, but could not show my student how to fix it so she used dates
with days greater than 12 and it was OK. Now we can fix it properly. Thanks
heaps.

David

> See the "Dates: day/month reversed" item under the "Connection methods"
> topic of the "Mail merge in Word 2002" section of fellow MVP Cindy
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
> >> > mailmerge as 11th May 2003. How do I make Mailmerge read the date
> >> > correctly?

Reply to this Message