User-defined date formatting not printing as displayed in spreadsheet

[usrrr]

I’ve got a column of dates formatted ddmm in a .ots file that’s a field in a mail merged writer document.

The dates display as desired in the spreadsheet, but when the mailmerged document is printed, the dates are printed as dd/mm/yy. The year part is sensitive and it’s important that it not be printed.

It’s as if mail merge can’t support a user-defined format. Yet when entering the date values in the spreadsheet originally I was unable to find a way to display just date and month as ‘1 Jan’ (and not year), without defining the new format and without having to enter a fictitious year anyway, in which in any case the year is still there.

If 1 Jan could be entered as 1/1, and that supported in the spreadsheet and across Libre Office and in mailmerge, it would be great.

Is there a workaround?

[mikekaganski]

Is there a bug report for it, with a reproducing sample?

[Wanderer]

@usrrr

and without having to enter a fictitious year anyway, in which in any case the year is still there.

Internally dates are represented in spreadsheets like Calc as “days since beginning of the 20th century” (actually 30.12.1899, if remembering correctly). So there is no date without year, even if you can tell calc not to show the year it calculates.

[Lupp]

@usrrr

The year part is sensitive and it’s important that it not be printed.

What about something mimicing a date and looking like “29-02”?

See also xkcd: ISO 8601 .

(Let me decide myself what I want to post and if it is “too similar” to something else!!)

[Wanderer]

@usrrr

It’s as if mail merge can’t support a user-defined format.

No, but you searched at the wrong side of the import.


In the Writer document you can use the context menu of the imported field to customize formatting. My screenshot shows a german localisation but I guess you will find the appropiate entry. Here I chang format for “Birthday”.

The other option would be to import a prepared column from Calc. You may create a Text-column, filled via formula like =TEXT(B2;"DD-MM") and then import this instead of the “real” date. (I also tried this with the <Short> field.)

[usrrr]

Ah I didn’t think of that. It’s all over now, but for the next project, when I have the same issue, I’ll try what you suggest.

Thank you all for your responses.