You can use field codes to do this without having an additional column in
your worksheet. If you insert a Date field into the main document and then
press ALT+F9, you see as below

{ MERGEFIELD "Date" }

To get all the dates in the merged documents to have a format you want; you
can add this formatting switch to the field code:

To display as January 1, 2010 try

{ MERGEFIELD "Date" \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" }


--
Jacob (MVP - Excel)


"Erinayn" wrote:

I have everyone's start date in a column. I'd like to create another column
with their start date in text so that I can then use it in a mail merge for
their certificates. I've got it converted but the MM/DD/YYYY is behind the
scenes and when I do the merge that comes over versus Month Day, Year.

Any help?