Joanna, to test my theory, pick an empty cell on a row with one of those
phone numbers, and assuming your phone number is in column F and working in
row 21, put this formula into the empty cell:
="(" & LEFT(F21,3) & ") " & MID(F21,4,3) & "-" & RIGHT(F21,4)
that should come out looking like a phone number also. It means that
whatever is in F21 has had special formatting applied to it.

Now, you can fill that formula up/down the column to pick up all of the
phone numbers and then select all of it. With all of the cells with the
formula in them selected use Edit | Copy and turn right around and use Edit |
Paste Special and tick the [Values] option and click OK. The Formulas will
be replaced by what you see, which can be used in a mail merge with better
results.

You can even go one step further: choose that column with the 'bad' phone
numbers and use Cells | Format and set it to General. The () and - will
disappear, and you can now copy the revised numbers (from paragraph above)
over the top of the bad ones and not have to change anything in your mail
merge set up. Of course you'll have to type in the () and - for future phone
numbers in that column.
"Joanna" wrote:

I did a mail merge from excel to a word directory. the () and - are gone from
the phone number fields.