I have a couple of reports that reference date fields for their values
<<date>> and I would like this merge field data to be formatted as Sept
12, 2005 rather than 09/12/2005.

In article <1126642680.772724.6240 (AT) g43g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
"Steven Bitaxi" <sbitaxi (AT) yorku (DOT) ca> wrote:

Depending on what else is in that block of text, try using the arrow
tool in Layout mode to click on the text block (once), then choose the
Date option in the Format menu and set the date format to how you want
it to appear.

This will format all date fields within the text block. If you want a
particular date to appear differently then you'll have to define a
Calculation field to recreate that date as plain text in the
appropriate format, and then insert that new field as the Merge Field.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)