Source data formatting in mail merges.

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Steven Fossedal - 08 Jun 2005 17:20 GMT

I support several hundred users of Office 2003. For the most part, I am very
happy with the product - as are most of my users. However, the Mail Merge
feature in Word 2003 has caused some consternation.

Several of my users produce fairly detailed "form" letters that include a
fairly large number of figures that need to be in currency format. They
largely pull these figures from Excel 2003, where the data is formatted as
currency. When they attempt to merge this data into the destination merge
document in Word 2003, the currency formatting is lost. I have shown these
users how to use the picture switch functions, but this is tedious --
especially for large documents with many figures. A simpler, and more
"direct" method would certainly be preferable.

I would truly love to see this matter addressed in a service release or
hotfix, as it is a significant pain (and I am sure that my users are not the
only ones complaining). Please address this issue and return convenience to
the realm of Mail Merges.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Steven Fossedal
Consultant
State of Wisconsin - DMT/BIS/DDES OS2U Project

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Peter Jamieson - 08 Jun 2005 22:01 GMT

Yes, it is a pain, but the people who frequent this group tend not to be
Microsoft people and can't do much more than relay from time to time what a
pain it is. And I suspect they already know.

The other simple way to "fix" this is of course to go back to the old
connection method by checking Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion
at open" and being willing to select a conversion each time you open a non
.doc document in Word (more or less) and each time you go into data source
selection. Then for Excel sources, check the DDE option when offered and the
behaviour should be more or less as it used to be. I suppose in theory you
could wrap the SelectDataSource operation up in a bit of VBA that uses
OpenDataSource with syntax that will force a DDE connection but I think I'd
try to avoid that unless absolutely necessary.

Peter Jamieson

>I support several hundred users of Office 2003. For the most part, I am
>very
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>
> http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?mid=464dd6f6-0c7a-4
a7a-b884-98a9cca256ba&dg=microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields

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Graham Mayor - 09 Jun 2005 04:33 GMT

http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm shows how to make
merge as much like its predecessor as possible - see the Excel data section
which emphasises Peter's point; however adding standard switches to
mergefields can be simplified using autotext or autocorrect to maintain the
correct syntax and allows Word to provide control - see also
http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

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> I support several hundred users of Office 2003. For the most part, I
> am very happy with the product - as are most of my users. However,
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> button, follow this link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft
> Web-based Newsreader and then click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?mid=464dd6f6-0c7a-4
a7a-b884-98a9cca256ba&dg=microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields

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