MS Word 2007 Mail Merge fails on ZIP codes with leading Zeros (eg. 01234)

Posted by Pretzel on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Pretzel
Published on 2010-06-10T03:13:32Z Indexed on 2012/10/06 21:41 UTC
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microsoft-word

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mail-merge

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microsoft-excel

I have an Excel Spreadsheet with a ZIP code column. For some dumb reason the original spreadsheet I got had all the zip codes stored as numbers, so a ZIP code like 01234 was stored as 1234. Easy to fix with "Format Column" as "Special => ZIP Code". All values like 1234, show up as 01234. Great!

When I import it into Word via Mail Merge (to print address labels), the ZIP codes on all the addresses starting with a leading zero (like 01234) revert to their old form (1234).

How do I fix this?

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