Automatically Use Correct Number Formats in Mail Merge Documents – Without Using Cumbersome Mergefields!

The way Word takes data for mail merge documents from an Excel spreadsheet often leads to formatting difficulties. The numbers displayed in the mail merge are not copied in the user’s interest.

For example, the date is displayed in the wrong format. For numerical values, the thousand separator is missing and the decimal places and percentage values are output with countless decimal places. This may look like this, for example:

A Complex and a Simple Solution

To ensure that the data is transferred correctly to mail merge documents, the data fields in the document must be formatted accordingly using MERGEFIELD formulas, like {MERGEFIELD date \@ “DD.MM.YYYY”} for the date field or {MERGEFIELD number \# $######,0.0} for the currency amount.

But this can be done much easier with the software tool “Quick Merge for Excel™+Word™”. Quick Merge uses the number formats of Excel for your mail merge exactly as they are displayed in Excel. The cumbersome procedure of inserting MERGEFIELD formulas is no longer necessary.

If you use Quick Merge, the mail merge automatically looks like this, according to the Excel table (example uses Swiss formatting):

Easy Creation of Mail Merge Documents with Correct Number Formatting with ‘Quick Merge’

When using Quick Merge, you create your main document as usual. You simply insert the merge fields into your Word document with curly brackets, such as {Turnover}, without complicated MERGEFIELD formulas. You can use the column header or the column letter as field names. Number and date formats as well as calculated values are automatically transferred exactly as displayed in Excel (example uses Swiss formatting).

With Quick Merge you can directly start the merge process and afterwards print the resulting document. Quick Merge also offers the possibility to save merged documents individually with individual file names in any desired folder. Detailed functions for “Quick Merge for Excel+Word” can be found here.