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Old 04-02-2016, 06:42 AM
marym marym is offline Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Windows 7 64bit Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Office 2007
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Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix.
 
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Default Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix.

Excel to Word, Office 2007, Win 7 64 bit.

I am a fairly competent excel and word user. I have an excel workbook with a number of sheets, and use this as the data source to populate address fields of some word docs based on a selection. This all works just fine 98% of the time. But, every so often, the mail merge doesn't pick up a field correctly, and I cannot fix it.



Right now, I have a "middle initial" field, and it worked just fine until recently, and now it always merges as a time field: 12:00:00 AM . It shows up just fine in the spreadsheet. It doesn't matter what the middle initial is, it always shows up as midnight in that format. I have been working around it by merging to a doc and editing the initial.

I have tried recreating the column in excel setting format as "text" and pasting as value from the original column, also copying using formula from original column and then copying THAT column, and at the same time recreating the word doc that is grabbing the data through mail merge, but nothing seems to work.

It has also happened with a zip code field, where if I entered the zip code into a "clean" cell, it would always show up as a "0" in the mail merge, and I am still using the work-around for that -- copying another zip code field into the new cell, then entering the correct zip code. Yes, I tried all of the above, tried rebuilding the mail merge, etc.

Ideas?

Mary
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Old 04-02-2016, 03:09 PM
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macropod macropod is offline Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Windows 7 64bit Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Office 2010 32bit
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As discussed in the Mailmerge Tips & Tricks 'Sticky' thread at the top of this forum (https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...ps-tricks.html), under the Mailmerge Data Format Problems heading, the problem with your "middle initial" field is most likely due to that column having mixed data types. Likewise, further down the page, is the topic Mailmerge US Zip Code Formatting, where a field code to resolve your zip code issues is presented.
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Old 04-09-2016, 04:56 AM
marym marym is offline Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Windows 7 64bit Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Office 2007
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Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix.
 
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I did 2 things. The first didn't seem to have an effect, but maybe in combination with the 2nd, it did.

I used tips under "Mailmerge Data Format Problems"

First, I reordered the sheets, renaming them through VB Properties so that the sheet that has the data I want is Sheet1. This is based on what was said in Paragraph 4 of that section.

Second, in the very first record in the sheet, I made that field "not empty". Because that record is very old, it never gets selected for the mailmerge, but making the "middle name" field for that very first record "not empty" magically fixed the issue. I did also try making the first selected record have that field "not empty", and that worked as well. However, that is not something that makes my life easier.
This action was based on the information on Para 3.
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Old 04-09-2016, 05:17 AM
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macropod macropod is offline Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Windows 7 64bit Mail Merge fields merge incorrectly and won't fix. Office 2010 32bit
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The optimal solution, of course, is to not have mixed data types, just as you wouldn't be able to do with an Access database, for example. The fact you're getting times in a 'middle initial' field really does suggest there are some problems with the data in that field. Fixing that would have obviated the need for any workarounds.

Renaming the sheets was quite unnecessary and is not what the Tips thread suggested.
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