Sorry.. I know my post was a little unclear. This is the formula that shows up in excel..
=IF('F:\Fund VI\company data\[company data sheet- AT.xlsx]Sheet1'!K4="","",CONCATENATE($A$186,'F:\Fund VI\company data\[company data sheet- AT.xlsx]Sheet1'!K4))

Basically, the company data sheet-at.xlsx is a separate spread sheet and the contents of the field, if any, is text. If the text field is blank, the resulting formula shows up as a blank. If it contains text, the formula show up as a bullet and then the text from the other spreadsheet. It used to populate the results correctly on my mail merge. This is what my result now looks like... the 12am is when there is text, and the
12:00:00 AM
● 0
● 0
● 0

Also, even though some of my numbers have extensions (Which I can easily put in a separate row), the rest of them are formatted as special text- phone numbers. I changed that thinking maybe it would help- previously they were just numbers. However, no matter how I format it the result is 12:00:00 AM

Please let me know if that helps clairfy things at all

How do I determine the data connection method? Sorry, I'm really a bit over my head here...