Percentages in mail merge

Hello -
I am setting up a mail merge document using Office XP 2002. The data source is an Excel spreadsheet. I am having problems merging percent fields. For example, the Excel spreadsheet contains 1.78%. Upon the mail merge, the data is dumped to .02 or depending on the formating 1.7612321 E - 02. Any ideas on how to change the data format would be greatly appreciated.

BTW - I have found lot of useful information on other type of numeric formatting at www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm. This was from a 4/30/2004 posting.

Thanks!
Lily

You will need to use the following field construction

{ = { MERGEFIELD "whatever" } * 100 \# "0.00%" }

to get what is now displaying as .02 to display as 1.78%.

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Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Lily" wrote in message
...
Hello -
I am setting up a mail merge document using Office XP 2002. The data
source is an Excel spreadsheet. I am having problems merging percent
fields. For example, the Excel spreadsheet contains 1.78%. Upon the mail
merge, the data is dumped to .02 or depending on the formating 1.7612321 E -
02. Any ideas on how to change the data format would be greatly
appreciated.

BTW - I have found lot of useful information on other type of numeric
formatting at www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm. This was from a
4/30/2004 posting.

Thanks!
Lily

Doug -
thank you for the information. I attempted this by inputing the {} manaully, and it did not work. I recalled reading one of your pervious responses to another user about CTRL F9. So, I gave this a shot and placed the argument within the brackets. Voila - it worked. You have been so helpful - can you tell me why I needed to use CTRL F9 for the argument to work correctly?

Thanks again for your assistance.

Lily

CTRL+F9 makes it into a field, whereas {} is simply text.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word




Lily wrote:
Doug -
thank you for the information. I attempted this by inputing the {}
manaully, and it did not work. I recalled reading one of your
pervious responses to another user about CTRL F9. So, I gave this a
shot and placed the argument within the brackets. Voila - it worked.
You have been so helpful - can you tell me why I needed to use CTRL
F9 for the argument to work correctly?

Thanks again for your assistance.

Lily

thank you.