Date format converts from Australian to American when mail merging

I have created an excel spreadsheet that contains a date column. I have set
all areas to Australian, including Regional Settings under the Control Panel.
When I merge it into an Office documet (which has also been set up for
Australia), the dates merge in an American format.

I am using Office 2003 on XP Home edition.

This may be relevent; copy from an earlier post, by Beth M :-

This is because you are using the default OLE DB data connection and
it only passes the data from Excel to Word which does not include
formatting.

You'll need to add a Date-Time picture switch to the merge field in
Word:

- Press Alt + F9 to toggle the field codes
- At the end of your date field add: \@ dd/MM/yy
- Press Alt + F9 to toggle off the field codes

Note that the month format must be in uppercase. A lowercase 'm' is
for minutes.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/



"Inspire" wrote in message
...
I have created an excel spreadsheet that contains a date column. I have
set
all areas to Australian, including Regional Settings under the Control
Panel.
When I merge it into an Office documet (which has also been set up for
Australia), the dates merge in an American format.

I am using Office 2003 on XP Home edition.