I’m trying to create some file folder labels in Word, for our election files for individual polling stations. For each polling station, these are to show information about the station, such as our percentage results, lead over other parties, etc.
Unfortunately, when I tried to do this, each of these figures came out as a very long decimal string, so that where the Excel spreadsheet had, say, 12.0%, the mail merge inserted 0.1197604191617.
How can I format these figures, in either Word or Excel, so that they will be merged into the labels as percentages with one decimal point instead of as arbitrarily long decimal strings?
I had a similar problem with phone numbers, which Excel exported as raw 12-digit strings.
I solved it not in Excel, but in Word, by telling it to format the merge field with field codes. Here is what I used for my phone numbers: {MERGEFIELD “Phone1” #"(###)###-####"} To do this, highlight the mergefield, right-click, and select Toggle Field Codes.
You could probably do something similar for your situation.
Another possibility would be to insert another column in Excel, based on the first column, but rounding the value to 1 decimal point, and then use that in your export. (You have to actually change the value, not just display it as rounded.)