Word XP Mail merge w/Excel: numbers going crazy

[Wizdar]

I’m doing a Word mail merge using Excel as the data source. The data, mostly numbers, are going into a table. The numbers have decided, on their own, to extend themselves by 14 decimal places!

This doesn’t happen to all the numbers, only to two columns of data. Originally, the cells were not formatted (General), but I’ve changed them to reflect the 2 or 3 decimal place number they should be. No help. There’s another column with the same type of data (that still hasn’t received any formatting) that’s perfectly happy with its 3 decimal place situation. There is no calculation involved; the numbers were entered directly.

This didn’t happen with Office 98. Thanks Bill.

Any ideas?

 

[dianemarie]

Hi Bill, I'm not sure this is what's happening with you, but it's fixed most of the issues we have had with Excel formatting problems in the new XP mail merge. Go to Tools-Options and click on the General tab. Select the option "Confirm Conversion at Open". Now perform your mail merge as usual and during the merge process, you will get a popup dialog box called "Confirm Data Source". Select "MS Excel Worksheets via DDE". Your data should now retain the formatting you gave it in Excel. The Knowledge Base article explaining this is 320473, if you want to see more detail.

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,
What you get in Word has no Excel formatting on it. Just raw numbers. This is especially a problem if your use formatting for Phone/Fax numbers - they come across as 10-digit numbers.

So you either format them in your Word table or create a column with explicit formatting using rounding and truncation.

Hope this helsp

Skip,
Skip@TheOfficeExperts.com

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com

 

[Wizdar]

So far it’s not working.

dianemarie, I don’t get the dialog box when I merge the data. But, this problem does not relate to that presented in the Knowledge Base article.

SkipVought, the cells originally were not formatted in Excel. They are now formatted to the correct decimal place. There is no rounding. 6.45 was entered as such, but comes out 6.4500000000000002.

I can’t seem to find anything in Word that will let me format like Excel, other than a 2 decimal place choice. I have numbers with 3 decimal places as well.

Thanks for trying. I’m going to end up taking this home and doing it on my Nice, Problem-Free Office 98.