The Date, Phone Number, and Currency fields are merged incorrectly when you use an Access or Excel data source in Word 97 or in Word 2000

When you perform a mail merge using ODBC with a Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel data source, the merge results for Date, Phone Number, and Currency fields are incorrect. For example, the Date field appears in the following format: The Currency field appears in the following format: The Phone Number field from Microsoft Access appears in the following format:

The data appears in its native, stored format in Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel. When you use DDE to convert the Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel data instead of ODBC, the data is "masked" to display the correct format.

Method 1: Use DDE to connect to the Microsoft Access or Excel database

To do this, select the Select Method (Confirm Conversion) check box in the Open Data Source dialog box, locate and select your Access/Excel database, and then click Open. In the Confirm Data Source dialog box, select Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel Database via DDE (*.mdb) and click OK.

NOTE: If DDE is not available, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Method 2: Use MyDateFieldToLong

In the Access database, type the following statement for the date column where MyDateFieldToLong is the actual name of the field being used to label the date column.

Method 3: Use ODBC and add a picture switch to the Date/Currency fields

Include a numeric picture switch (\#) in the Currency field, so that the Currency field looks like this: NOTE: The {mergefield number \# $####,0.0} string works for SQL Server 6 as well.

Include a numeric picture switch (\#) in the Phone Number field, so that the Phone Number field looks like this: NOTE: The hyphen inside the mergefield is in quotation marks. Also, the quotation marks are single quotation marks. For more information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Include a date-time picture switch (\@) in the Date field, so that the Date field looks like this: NOTE: The picture switch is case-sensitive; also, you must use quotation marks around the picture string.