Merging Only a Date from Access

Tricia is creating a mail-merge document using an Access database as a data source. One of the fields being merged is a date/time field, but when the merge is complete the resulting merged data shows both the time and the date. Tricia wants to only show the date portion of the data.

There are two ways you can approach this issue. One is to format the data in the original Access database, and the other is to format what is merged from that database. If you have access to the database, you can look at it in design view (in Access) and change the format of the field. Format it using something like mm/dd/yyyy, and that is the way that the data will be merged into Word.

The other approach is to change the formatting used with the merge field in Word. Display the source of the merge field, and it should look something like the following:

{ MERGEFELD NameOfDateFieldInAccess \* MERGEFORMAT }

You want to add a formatting code to the field; change it to look like the following:

{ MERGEFELD NameOfDateFieldInAccess  \@ "M/d/yyyy" \* MERGEFORMAT }

Now, collapse the field code and again run your merge. The merged data should be shown in the specified format (M/d/yyyy). If you want a different format, all you need to do is change the pattern used in the merge field.