1. The process could also be automated, so that you don't have to do the conversions manually. In any event, if you changed the separators from tildes to the more standard commas or tabs, the problem might go away of its own accord.

2. When you use Excel's text to columns tool, you can specify the format for each column. You can prevent 1234567890123456 changing to 1234567890123450 by specifying the 'text' format for that column.

3. If this problem has only recently started happening, something has changed in your working environment - either Office has developed a fault or some other aspect of your system has been changed (e.g. you've started using tildes instead of commas or tabs for the separators).

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul,

I understand we can automated the process.
At the time being, we have over hundred different .txt files input which is automated to feed to word (>100 different letter templates) for the mailmerge.

If we need to change to excel, and that need non-unified process to change this auto process, as each .TXT can have variable numeric fields that need 'text' type to be changed by excel, so why I told it is not a preferable process, as letter-1 may need column a,c with 'text' type, letter-2 may need column d,e with 'text' type, letter-2 may need column a,d with 'text' type etc.

Nothing have changed we using '~' so far in all these .TXT files, and they work, except this Y79.doc.

I tried remove also '~' at the end of each record for process, but it did not work.

I hope I have described our situation clearly and why I want a MS word itself solution.