I've never seen a mailmerge that outputs tags such as you describe. Mailmerges only ever output the underlying data, respecting only the data types (dates, text, numbers, etc.) If those tags are being output by the mailmerge, that's how your data are actually stored. If you're using the Rich Text format in an endeavour to get Word to respect the formatting, don't bother. All of what you've got in those tags can be accommodated via a simple Charformat switch added to the relevant mergefields in Word and the use of plain text in your database.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]