The merge merely picks up the cell contents as a number, not the formatting.
I find that the easiest way of dealing with this is to produce a helper
column using the TEXT() function to specify the required format, and then
use that column as your data source for the merge.

I believe that there are ways of specifying field formats within Word, but
I'll leave Word experts to tell you about that route.
--
David Biddulph

"Lynn" wrote in message
...
Hi,
I need help on how to make the thousand separator appears after I merged
the
excel file into word document. I was able to merge my excel file - the
data
source into word document, but the thousand separator didn't appear with
the
numbers after i merged it into the word document. I also baffled why the
parenthesis would change to a minus sign after i merged it. Can any one
help? I am really desparate. Thanks so much!

Lynn