The 001 is simply the displayed output. You don't reference that in a calculation; only whatever Dropdown1 returns. You can also lose the ' \* MERGEFORMAT' - it's quite unnecessary. So, if you want to use th, you'd code along the lines of:
{={IF{REF Dropdown1}= "Finance" 2 {IF{REF Dropdown1}= "HR" 1 0}}*5}
where 5 is whatever you want to multiply the selected item's value by. However, that's really no different than:
{IF{REF Dropdown1}= "HR" 5}{IF{REF Dropdown1}= "Finance" 10}
I suggest you take a look at my Microsoft Word Field Maths Tutorial, available at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...Maths-Tutorial
and:
http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm#Third_party

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