Debra Dalgleish posted this to a similar question:

There's an article on the Microsoft web site that might help you:

Answer Box: Numbers don't merge right in Word
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/as...164951033.aspx

And if you prefer the old Mail Merge helper, Word MVP Suzanne Barnhill
has instructions he

http://home.earthlink.net/~wordfaqs/...ngWord2002.htm

about half way down the page.

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Or maybe you could use a helper column:

=if(a1="","",text(a1,"00000")

As you've seen formatting the cell doesn't change the value--you'll have to do
that yourself.

Michele wrote:

I am doing a simple mail merge from other peoples excel lists...when I print
the lables, many of the zip codes show as a zero on the label. I notice a
green comment error corner and by ignoring the error, the problem goes away
but what causes this to begin with? If I highlight the whole column to
format as zip codes the boxes do not go away. If I correct and then copy the
data to a new sheet the new formatting does not save.

--

Dave Peterson