As I have said in previous posts, I don't have any trouble merging all your records. Have you tried repairing the Office installation (via Start > Windows Control Panel > Programs > Programs & Features > Microsoft Office (version) > Change>Repair)?

As for importing the data into Excel, I don't see why you believe that will create any issues with numeric data. You might also get better results if your data were generated in a standard format, with commas or tabs as field delimiters instead of tildes.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]