Cannot Find Its Data Source

[Dave Foote]

We are having trouble with the Mail Merge in WordXP which are on the verge of
rolling out to all of our staff.

Once a document has been created and saved with a mail merge that has been
linked to a data source the document will re-open correctly provided NO
FILTER has been placed on the data source. If the document is saved with a
filter in place when you re open the document a message of the form:

abc.doc is a mail merge main document. Word cannot find its data source,
\\aserver\datadir\abc1.xls

(Note this also happens using Access Databases as the data source so is not
an exclusive excel/word issue)

You then have the option to locate the data source or effectively remove all
the header info and so remove all the mail merge functions.

So effectively you have to relocate the data source each time you open the
mail merge document.

Any ides how to correct this?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Yes, it's a pain - although I know for a fact that this problem has been
reported, and I believe it was fixed in Word 2003, I do not think it has
been fixed in any of the XP service packs. Nor do I know of any workaround,
let alone a simple one. As long as the merge documents are completely
predefined by the IT people, I suppose your best option is to set up the
data source and any necessary filters using an AutoOpen macro, and never let
the user overwrite the original document. If the user need to be able to
save the sorts/filters he/she has imposed, I suspect the only option would
be to run a macro (perhaps an Autoclose macro, though I never feel
particularly comfortable with those) that captures the current querystring,
saves it (e.g. in a document variable), then removes it. Then have an
AutoOpen that re-establishes the sort/filter criteria. But I suspect that
even if that is theoretically feasible it falls foul of another unfixed
error whereby trying to get the value of Querystring causes an error in Word
XP. The only way I know to find that Querystring is to save the document as
a web page, then go and inspect the HTML.Not my idea of a robust solution,
either.

Best I can do I'm afraid.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Dave Foote]

Thank you for that Peter.

I had a notion in the back of my mind that it would be a known (reported)
problem although I can't find any reference in the MS knowledge base to it.

I might be able to get round the problem by monitoring for document closure
through a VB .NET addin (event sinking the document close) and then modifying
the or at least storing the datasource requirements in the document
properties as you suggest I'll have an experiment with the QueryString to see
what happens.

Thanks again

Dave Foote

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I suppose it is possible that the Querystring problem (if it exists) is to
do with OLE Automation and that there is another more direct way to get the
value using COM. I've yet to work out exactly what low-level interface .NET
addins use to get these values.

Gotta go now,

Peter Jamieson