Mail merge and Excel

NikolinoDE nope, that does not work for me. I am not a programmer, so maybe I have syntax wrong but I followed your instructions I think and it retains the undesired date format. I can format the Excel cells and that looks the way I want it (dd/MM/yyyy).

The issue happens when I merge the data into the mailmerge Word doc. It simply refuses to use the date format from the Excel file.

Ok, so I did as instructed, I clicked on the offending field in the merged document , clicked Edit Field, (it told me it was a mergefield with the name Date), I then clicked on Field Codes in the bottom left of the dialogue box which changed the Date name in the upper right box to   MERGEFIELD Date , I then clicked on Options in the lower left of the dialogue which gave me General Switches and Field Specific Switches. The General dialogue related to Text so I clicked on the Field Specific sSitches which gave me a set of 4 options \b, \f, \m, \v. That is, no \a option. Does this mean there is no \a option?

Undeterred, I went back to the Mergefield Date dialogue and manually entered \a "dd/MM/yyyy" after Date but that did not change the field, so I assume it does not recognise the \a switch?

Also, when I then went back to my merged document and selected the date field and then Toggle Field codes, my manually added switch is shown but the date remains as the offending MM/dd/yyyy.

I have run out of ideas and abilities. Do you have any suggestions?