Attempting Mail Merge of Means into Excel -- Help!

[Colleen]

I am working from a spreadsheet containing means for about 5000 cells. The
original started with me using the number category with one decimal place to
"hide" the decimals after that point (e.g. 3.1 not 3.1235212343).

My ultimate goal is to merge these data into a table in a Word document. I
thought once I merged the document it would keep this formatting (3.1 only).
I was wrong (my Word mail merge shows 3.1235212343).

I went thru by hand and changed my 5000 cells to read with the 10th decimal
only (3.1 not 3.1235212343), but the longer version still comes through. What
is going on?

PLEASE HELP -- I'm so confused and getting frustrated!

Thanks, Colleen

 

[David Biddulph]

You can either use MS Word's field formatting options, or you could produce
a helper column =TEXT(A2,"0.0")

 

[Colleen]

Thanks, David. So would I use the MS Word's field formatting options once I
complete the mail merge, or is it possible to do this priot to the merge? I
am producing 50 local reports based on an aggreate data-set. Anything I can
do up front so I don't have to modify each indivdual report is preferable.

Thanks so much for your insight, Colleen

 

[David Biddulph]

I'm no expert on the field formatting in Word, and a Word newsgroup would
probably be a better place to ask than an Excel newsgroup, but I think that
one of the recommended sources for information on this topic is
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/index.htm

 

[Colleen]

Point taken, although I was able to fix it in Excel by using "text to
columns" function found at the link you provided. Thanks much!!!!!