date in Excel displays incorrectly when merged in letter

[Feather 52]

We are trying to mail merge from Excel. One of the fields we want to use is
a date field. In Excel, the date displays correctly in the cell (i.e.
September 1, 2001); but in the function bar at the top of the page, it
display 9/1/2001). So, when it merges, it has the 9/1/2001 on the letter.
How do we get it to display correctly in mail merge? We've tried the Custom
feature from the category list.

[Paul Lautman]

Feather 52 wrote:
> We are trying to mail merge from Excel. One of the fields we want to
> use is a date field. In Excel, the date displays correctly in the
> cell (i.e. September 1, 2001); but in the function bar at the top of
> the page, it display 9/1/2001). So, when it merges, it has the
> 9/1/2001 on the letter. How do we get it to display correctly in mail
> merge? We've tried the Custom feature from the category list.

You need to put some date formatting codes in the merge field.

\@ "MMMM, d yyyy"

should do it.