I am running XP Home with Office 2002 applications.

I am not sure if this is an Excel programming problem or a Word Mail Merge
problem. Here is the setup. In an Excel file via Excel programming, I have
opened a Word document. The Word document opened is a mail merge document
that uses a second, different, Excel file as a data source. That 2nd Excel
file (the data source) happens to be open already at the time the Word
document is loaded. The mail merge is via ODBC.

Here is the problem: When the Excel code is run and any record is merged
into the Word file, the date mergefield is merged as a serial value, not the
format I desire ("dd Mmm yy"). All other (non-date)merged fields are merged
in the correct format. This occurs even though the cell in the Excel file
the data came from is formatted as a custom "dd Mmm yy" and the date
mergefield in the Word document uses the field codes \@ "dd MMM yy". If I
open the Word document directly and perform the mail merge, the date is
merged in the correct format, not a serial value. I only obtain the serial
value when merged through the Excel programming.

I have searched the NGs and Google but have not found any posts or
references that correct the problem. I am not sure where else to look or
what else to do at this point. Thank you in advance for any assistance or
advice.

Boog