We have encountered a problem when using an Excel spreadsheet to populate information in a Word letter via mail merge. Despite setting all the language and date settings in both Windows and XP the date continues to be changed from the UK format to the US format, since we are an NHS department this is very unhelpful when importing Date of Birth, etc. Has any one else encountered this problem and have you discovered a solution? I've tried protecting the worksheet but that does not help.

We have encountered a problem when using an Excel spreadsheet to populate information in a Word letter via mail merge. Despite setting all the language and date settings in both Windows and XP the date continues to be changed from the UK format to the US format, since we are an NHS department this is very unhelpful when importing Date of Birth, etc. Has any one else encountered this problem and have you discovered a solution? I've tried protecting the worksheet but that does not help.

Hi and welcome to D-A-L

I found this while googling here http://www.d-a-l.com/help/archive/in...p/t-18326.html good old D-A-L to have the answer

its a "feature" of Mail Merge that all dates are imported to the Word document in US American format. To switch the date back to UK format you have to use the Format Merged Data using switch formatting on all date fields. If you Alt and F9 you will see the MergeFormat Field on your Word document. If you type \@"dd/MM/yyyy" at the end of the field the date is displayed in that format.

type as seen i.e with quote marks and the month format must be in upper case for it to work.