The downside is that you need to know certain formatting codes. To do this, you need to use Excel’s TEXT function, which enables you to convert a number or date into its equivalent text formatted exactly the way you desire. The first way is to avoid the problem: In the Excel worksheet, insert a column with a formula that converts the Excel numbers or dates into a text format that is exactly the same as what you would want to appear in your Mail Merge document. For example, a sales result in Excel appears as 100 but in Word it suddenly becomes 99.99999999996!įortunately, there are no less than three different ways to get Mail Merge numbers to appear the way they should.
One of the perennial annoyances of Mail Merge is its inability to format numbers from an Excel spreadsheet correctly. Unfortunately, the task of learning to master all of its idiosyncrasies can give you countless headaches.
Once you learn how to use it, you can save countless hours of work. It is extremely powerful for creating labels and customized letters, emails, or reports. The Mail Merge feature of Microsoft Word is one of my favorite parts of the program.
