MS Word Mail Merge - Date and Numeric format

I use MS Word Mail Merge function quite often in my HR operational projects that target a big group of employee/customer. For example is greeting card.

Common problem that user facing with mail merge is date and numeric format. With 2 mins, your problem should resolve follow the 4 step guide.

For example:

Assume you have excel worksheet with date, brithday and age column, and using MS Word document mail merge function to generate word document.

Date : 《Date》
Birthday : 《Birthday》
Age : 《Age》

Press 《ABC》 button you get this format

Date : 7/14/2009
Birthday : 10/3/1954
Age : 54.834999487886847

The solution as follow:-

Step 1 - Press Alt + F9, you should see your mail merge document show as below

Date : {MERGEFIELD "Date"}
Birthday : {MERGEFIELD "Birthday"}
Age : {MERGEFIELD "Age"}

Step 2 - add date and numeric format highlighted in RED color

Date : {MERGEFIELD "Date" \@"dd-MMM-yyyy"}
Birthday : {MERGEFIELD "Birthday" \@"dd-MMM-yyyy"}
Age : {MERGEFIELD "Age" \@# #0}

Step 3 - Press Alt + F9 again, you should get back to this format

Date : 《Date》
Birthday : 《Birthday》
Age : 《Age》

Step 4 - Press 《ABC》 button again, you should see this result

Date : 14/Jul/2009
Birthday : 3/Oct/1954
Age : 55


FYI, if you want a decimal point, you can use \@# #0.0, the word document should display 54.8 in age column.

Intern Orientation

What really happen on intern orientation?

Normally on day 1, all interns report to Internship programme manager. As a programme manager, I normally buy them first morning breakfast and follow by company tour. Meet the key people in the organization, like General Manager, Finance Manager, IT Manager and HR Manager. Next, the repective hiring manager will bring them back to respective department to understand the role and responsibility for this programme.

A special orientation will be held in the afternoon in the HR Office. During the orientation, key message to be deliver to all interns are to forget what their learnt from the school. For the coming weeks, they will face the really working life. 8:30am to 5:30pm, traffic jam, working with bossy boss.

Next, each of the intern will be given a piece of A4 blank paper, use their creative mind to draw what is their feel at this moment in time. And each intern will be given another 5 minutes to present to all of us what is the story of this picture.

In addition, each intern will be give a "Welcome Pack", they need to document all the project give by the hiring manager, they need to complete this document and given 10 minutes to present on last day of the internship program.

On the last week of the internship program, each intern is give 10 minutes to present the project their have involved and share among others interns, so that other is benefit as well. Upon presenting their material, a certification of completion are given to recognise their effort in the organization. Of course farewell coffee break is on my.

In my memory, there is 1 picture drawn by an intern that I cannot forgot. This intern used a black maker pen draw a big spot. He said he was lost in the black hole, don't know what do expect on the 1st day. After the internship programme over, I asked this intern to draw another picture again, this time, he draw a spaceship and he is the pilot. It was interest, I given him 10 minutes to present his story, he said he was amazed and the sky is not the limit, it is up to us to explore and future is there for us to explore.