You can also enter commas (,), decimals (.) and currency signs ($). The # code will be replaced by a digit only if it is not a leading or trailing zero. Codes entered in switches can contain multiple parts separated by semi-colons: The common codes used in a number switch are 0 for a required digit and # for a variable number. Related article: How to Use Mail Merge in Microsoft Word to Generate Form Lettersĭo you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or live classroom Word courses > Using codes in a number field switch

You can use switches to change the format of a number field to display currency symbols as well as commas or decimals.Ī number field is typically inserted in the main document using Insert Merge Field on the Mailings tab in the Ribbon. Number formatting issues typically occur when the source document for the mail merge is an Excel workbook or Access database. You can change or fix the format of a number field in a Word mail merge document using switches in field codes. IT thinks upgrading to Windows 10 with Office 2016 might fix it, but who knows? Meantime, I’d like to know why something that has worked just fine for years now suddenly runs like crap.Change the Format of a Number Field in a Microsoft Word Mail Merge Document Using Switchesīy Avantix Learning Team | Updated January 16, 2021Īpplies to: Microsoft ® Word ® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 365 (Windows) (One bit of evidence in support of this theory – if I do a mail merge to a Word file rather than PDF, it is just as slow.)Ĭurrently running Windows 7 with Office 2013. But I persuaded them to reinstall the old version and it is still slow. Two thousand letters may take 4 hours.Īt first I suspected that Adobe Acrobat was the bottleneck, because a few months back corporate IT forced me to upgrade from Acrobat Pro XI to 2017.

And the longer it runs, the slower it goes. Normally a small job will take a minute or two, larger jobs may take 20-30 minutes. Job size can be anywhere from a couple thousand to around 50,000 letters. Basically I have a letter template in Word, data source is an Excel spreadsheet, and output is a PDF file. A few times a year I have to run a job to generate some letters using Microsoft Word’s mail merge functionality.

Office 2016 mail merge currency