Using dates during mail merge

Where Graham has "date2" you need to put the name of the field in the data
source that you want to compare with (i.e. that has the date in "1st
February 2008" format)

(i.e. Graham's example has used the name "date2" where my example has used
"mydatetext", but in both cases you need to substitute the name in your data
source.)

Other than that, AFAICS, Graham's fields should work - if you change the two
{ DATE } fields in my example so that instead of looking like

{ DATE .... }

they look like

{ REF MyDate .... }

you should be there. In theory there's a typo (unusual for him :-) ) in
Graham's code:

{ ASK MyDate "Start Date" \d { Date \@ "dd/MM/yyyy} \o }

should have an extra quote:

{ ASK MyDate "Start Date" \d { Date \@ "dd/MM/yyyy" } \o }

but in practice it works as it is.

I'd select your field codes and press F9 to re-execute them after you change
them.

--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

"gjupp via OfficeKB.com" u41094@uwe wrote in message
news:7fa15597a8bdf@uwe...
Many thanks for this. I tried it out but couldn't make it work. I even
tried
'tweaking' spaces and quotes (very much groping in the dark) to see it
this
would do the trick. You included 'MyDate' and 'Date2' in your construction
but I cannot understand the function of 'Date2'. It is probably this
element
that I have got wrong.

Peter Jamieson has suggested a solution that I have been able to make
work.
This is great and really deals with my oringinal request. However, it is
irritating that I have not been able to make your 'ASK' routine to
function
properly. If you have time to clarify, I shall be grateful. Please don'y
bother if you are too busy. Many thanks again.


Graham Mayor wrote:
It appears there were two issues that prevented this from working here as
intended

1. I was using an ASK field to collect the date to compare thus

{ ASK MyDate "Start Date" \d { Date \@ "dd/MM/yyyy} \o }{ SKIPIF {
MERGEFIELD Date2 } "{ REF MyDate \@ "d " \*Ordinal}{ REF MyDate \@ "
MMMM
yyyy" }" }

Unfortunately I was using one of my test data files which also had a field
called MyDate (unused in the merge) which conflicted with the bookmark of
the same name. With that fieldname changed it worked.

2. This construction will not work for a range of dates eg

{ ASK MyDate "Start Date" \d { Date \@ "dd/MM/yyyy} \o }{ SKIPIF {
MERGEFIELD Date2 } "{ REF MyDate \@ "d " \*Ordinal}{ REF MyDate \@ "
MMMM
yyyy" }" }

for that type of range you cannot compare dates with ordinal fields and
must
revert to the switch I posted earlier. You cannot derive a date in the
format \@ "yyyyMMdd" from a field containing ordinal text.

Seems OK in both 2003 and 2000, with or without the quotes, which
leads me to wonder whether we are attempting the same thing and/or
[quoted text clipped - 86 lines]
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