c# mail merge only showing date fields in merge

[ChrisRS]

I am using C# with Visual Studio 2005 with Office 2003 mail merging data from
an SQL database.

The merge works successfully using various templates and various SQL queries
and creates the final merged document. However only fields which are datetime
fields are outputted and text fields are left blank in the Word doc. The
fields in the query do contain data and no errors are produced.

Any ideas on what can be causing this?

A small section of the merge code is shown below (if that helps)

Cheers
Chris

-----------------------

wrdApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ApplicationClass();
wrdApp.Visible = true;
oDataDoc = wrdApp.Documents.Add(ref oName, ref oFalse, ref oMissing, ref
oMissing);
oDataDoc.Activate();
wrdMailMerge = oDataDoc.MailMerge;
wrdMailMerge.HighlightMergeFields = true;
oQuery = stat.Text; // stat field contains SQL query

wrdMailMerge.OpenDataSource("", ref oFileFormat, ref oMissing, ref oMissing,
ref oTrue, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oFalse, ref
oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oConnection, ref oQuery, ref oMissing, ref
oMissing, ref oSubType);
// i think the above line of code is causing the problem

wrdMailMerge.SuppressBlankLines = true;
wrdMailMerge.Destination =
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdMailMergeDestination.wdSendToNewDocument;
wrdMailMerge.Execute(ref oFalse);
oDataDoc.Close(ref oFalse, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);

------------------

 

[Peter Jamieson]

If it's a SQL Server database, then the problem is likely to be that you
have Unicode format fields in your database, and the OpenDataSource you are
using is likely to cause Word to open a connection using ODBC. Either ODBC
does not pass the Unicode data through or WOrd+ODBC doesn't. If that's the
case, what you really need to do is to set up a .ODC or .UDL file that
contains the connection infromation for your database and specify that in
the Name parameter of the method call. If you can't do that, the only ways
to live with this limitation are either to change the database field types
to be non-unicode, or use a view (or other technique) and the CAST/CONVERT
functions to convert to non-Unicode data.

 

[ChrisRS]

Thanks for that.... I will look into it.

Cheers
Chris

 

[ChrisRS]

oki....

I have created a UDL file that will connect to the server.... however I am
unable to connect the UDL file to the C# code.

The code i am using is :-

....
Object oConnection = new OleDbConnection("File Name = c:\\test.udl");
....
....
wrdMailMerge.OpenDataSource("", ref oFileFormat, ref oMissing, ref oMissing,
ref oTrue, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oFalse, ref
oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oConnection, ref oQuery, ref oMissing, ref
oMissing, ref oSubType);
....

And error is....
Type mismatch. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020005 (DISP_E_TYPEMISMATCH))

I presume the mismatch is with the connection object but not sure were I am
going wrong.

Any help please?

Many thanks
Chris

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Set the name parameter of the OpenDataSOurce to be the pathname of the
..odc/.udl, e.g.

wrdMailMerge.OpenDataSource("c:\\test.udl", ref oFileFormat, ref oMissing,
ref oMissing,
ref oTrue, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oFalse, ref
oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oConnection, ref oQuery, ref oMissing, ref
oMissing, ref oSubType);

Typically you would not need to provide an Connection parameter (the info.
is in the .udl) or any particular SubType (i.e. you can probably leave that
as oMissing) but you will need a Query and you may find that you have to
alias any table names it contains, even though it may not be syntactically
necessary.

 

[ChrisRS]

Many thanks... it is all sorted