MS-Word, the word processing software from Microsoft Corporation is often used by individuals and institutions to create and print personalized letters in large quantities. For this the Mail Merge feature of MS Word is used. Suppose you want to print one thousand letters wherein the letter text remains same but recipient name and address and date changes every time; in such a scenario, mail merge comes to your rescue.
When you do Mail Merge and if you are using a date field of mergeformat, sometimes MS-Word picks date field from source and prints it in an unwanted format. But, thankfully, we can change the format of date to suit your purpose.
Select the date field that you have inserted in your document.
Take right click on it and select “Edit Field…” from the pop-up menu
A box will appear. Click on Field Codes buttonMS-Word: Field Codes button
Now you will see a box containing field codes of the date field in question. It would be something like:
Also Read: See more of MS-Word Tips and Trick
Where MyDate is the name of your date field (so it could be different in your case)
If there is anything after the field name, just delete that.
Now add the date format switch after field name in the following fashion:
MERGEFIELD MyDate \@ “d MMMM yyyy”
Click OK and the format of your field should get changed to the one whose switch you’ve just used.
Example of date switches:
\@ “dddd, d MMMM yyyy” (formats like: Monday, 5 August 2013)
\@ “ddd, d MMMM yyyy” (formats like: Mon, 5 August 2013)
\@ “d MMM yyyy” (formats like: 5 Aug 2013)
\@ “dd/MMM/yyyy” (formats like: 05/Aug/2013)
Besides these, you can create any of your desired codes by rearranging these switches (d, M and y). For example, you can write \@ “MMM d yyyy” to format date like Aug 5 2013.
Remember: “m” is used for minutes in a date field. For month, it is capital m (M) that you should use.
I hope it was useful for you. Thank you for using TechWelkin.