danish letters

[bilisa]

Hi

Im having problems when I merge my document / template with a .csv data
source. My data source is already attached to the template via some vba
script. I have some translation problems when the data posts contain danish
letters as Ø,ø,æ,Æ,å, Å. Some times they disappear and sometimes they turn
into asian symbols in the merged letter. They open correctly in Excel but are
not displayed correctly in the merged letter.

This is my code:

Dim myheader As String

filnavn = "C:\FLETFIL.CSV"

With ActiveDocument.MailMerge

.MainDocumentType = wdFormLetters

.OpenDataSource _
Name:=filnavn, _
Connection:="Entire Spreadsheet", _
SubType:=wdMergeSubTypeWord2000

' Do it
.Destination = wdSendToNewDocument
.Execute
End With

What is wrong with it? Any help is appreciated.

Yours sincerely

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I suggest you try the following instead, but use the pathname of the folder
containing your text file instead of "c:\myfiles", and if necessary, change
the name of the ODBC DSN in the connection parameter to match the name of a
Text Driver DSN on your system.

..OpenDataSource _
Name:=filnavn, _
Connection:="DSN=Delimited Text
Files;DBQ=c:\myfiles;DriverId=27;FIL=text;MaxBufferSize=2048;PageTimeout=5;",
_
SQLStatement:="SELECT * FROM " & filnavn

Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

This may sound as a stupid question: What is Text Driver DSN on system?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It is something you have to have to use an ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity)
data source.

Word can read a text data source using a number of different methods,
including
a. its own internal text converter
b. ODBC
c. OLEDB
d. indirectly, e.g. using Excel (the method you were using)

All these methods suffer from various problems, but in this case I believe
the ODBC method is most likely to work. However, it does require that you
have ODBC on your system, which I believe you will have by default. if you
do not, and you need to distribute your solution, other approaches begin to
look better, But to check, go into Windows Control Panel and look for
Performance and Maintenance|Administrative Tools|Data Sources (ODBC), or
just Administrative Tools|Data Sources (ODBC), and look in the User DSN tab
for "Delimited Text Files". if you do not see it, click Add, find Microsoft
Text Driver, fill in the details, and take it from there.


Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

I followed your instructions, but I still have the same problem. It seems to
me that this is some sort of conversion problem. Any ideas?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Sorry, my mistake. I still think it can be done, but right now I can only
check with Word 2003, which sometimes behaves in a slightly different way.
Apologies in advance if neither of these suggestions work:

ActiveDocument.MailMerge.OpenDataSource
Name:="", _
Connection:="DSN=Delimited Text
Files;DBQ=C:\;DriverId=27;FIL=text;MaxBufferSize=2048;PageTimeout=5;", _
SQLStatement:="SELECT * FROM " & filnavn, _
SubType:=wdMergeSubTypeOther

or perhaps just

ActiveDocument.MailMerge.OpenDataSource
Name:="", _
Connection:="DSN=Delimited Text
Files;DBQ=C:\;DriverId=27;FIL=text;MaxBufferSize=2048;PageTimeout=5;", _
SQLStatement:="SELECT * FROM " & filnavn

It is certainly a conversion problem, but
a. if you try to open the file as a "text file" (you can see a bit more of
what is going on if you check Word Tools|Options|General|Confirm conversion
at open before opening the file manually) you will probably see the oriental
characters or a dialog asking about the character set
b. if you try to use OLEDB, usually you see a dialog asking for the text
(field) delimiter, and you may also see a character encoding dialog

Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

I tried with your suggestions, but same result.. hope we can crack this one

 

[bilisa]

The strange thing sbout it is that I have two .csv data files both containing
ø,æ,å etc. and have the same structure, but they behave differently when
merged with the same document!?!?!

 

[Peter Jamieson]

That would not surprise me if the encoding was different (e.g. one is
encoded using Unicode and the other using Windows/ANSI). You can test some
of that by opening the file in Notepad and saving it using the different
encodings Notepad supports - or you can open in Word and save as encoded
text.

Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

I changed the encoding from ANSI to Unicode which solved the problem. So now
I have located the problem. Next how to sove it with vba when doing a
mailmerge. Alternatively I can export my files using unicode encoding, but I
dont know if its possible..

 

[Peter Jamieson]

OK, I managed to check some things on a WordXP system again. Can you try the
same as before, but use

wdMergeSubtypeWord2000 instead of wdMergeSubtypeOther

?

(That's what I thought it should be under Word 2002 but it didn't seem to
work under Word 2003)

Another ODBC is to create a file DSN and use that to access the file. You
can create a file DSN in the ODBC Administrator we looked at earlier, but
you can also do it in Wordpad as long as you know the exact name of the
Driver (it's the name that appears in the list when you create a new DSN in
ODBC).


For example, create the following file in Notepad and save it as
c:\filedsns\mydsn.dsn

[ODBC]
DRIVER=Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt; *.csv)
PageTimeout=5
MaxBufferSize=2048
FIL=text
DriverID=27

Then use this code:

..OpenDataSource _
Name:="c:\filedsns\mydsn.dsn", _
Connection:="FILEDSN=c:\filedsns\mydsn.dsn;", _
SQLStatement:="SELECT * FROM ktext.text", _
SubType:=wsMergeSubTypeWord2000


That's my last attempt for tonight!

Peter Jamieson

 

[Peter Jamieson]

If you use Unicode I don't think the ODBC approach will work properly, BTW.
But I'm not completely sure.

Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

Maybe I can open my file (during mailmerge) and save it with the proper
encoding.. Something like this:

Documents.Open FileName:=filnavn, _
Encoding:="Unicode"
Documents.Save
Documents.Close

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What I meant was that even if your data source is a Unicode Text file, you
may not avoid the encoding dialog that pops up when you open a file.
However, if you save as a Word document then use that as a data source, I
think you will be OK - if the data source is large, just be prepared for a
slow start to the merge.

Some sample conversion macros...

Sub ConvertToUTF8()
' convert to a UTF8 format text file

' Needs error checking etc.
Dim oDoc as Word.Document

' change msoEncodingWestern to be the encoding you need. I think this should
work.

Set oDoc = Documents.Open("the path name of the file you need to
convert.txt", _
False, , False, , , , , , _
wdOpenFormatEncodedText, _
msoEncodingWestern, _
False, False, , True)

' Several of the parameters here are optional or
' irrelevant - you can probably remove the lines from
' ReadOnlyRecommended to SaveAsAOCLetter

oDoc.SaveAs _
FileName:="the path name of the file to convert to.txt", _
FileFormat:=wdFormatUnicodeTex­t, _
AddToRecentFiles:=False, _
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, _
EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False­, _
SaveFormsData:=False, _
SaveAsAOCLetter:=False, _
Encoding:=msoEncodingUTF8, _
InsertLineBreaks:=False, _
AllowSubstitutions:=False, _
LineEnding:=wdCRLF

oDoc.Close Savechanges:=False
Set oDoc = Nothing
End Sub

or

Sub ConvertToWord()
' convert to a Word document file

' Needs error checking etc.
Dim oDoc as Word.Document

' change msoEncodingWestern to be the encoding you need. I think this should
work.

Set oDoc = Documents.Open("the path name of the file you need to
convert.txt", _
False, , False, , , , , , _
wdOpenFormatEncodedText, _
msoEncodingWestern, _
False, False, , True)

' Several of the parameters here are optional or
' irrelevant - you can probably remove the lines from
' ReadOnlyRecommended to Encoding

oDoc.SaveAs _
FileName:="the path name of the file to convert to.doc", _
FileFormat:=wdFormatDocument, _
AddToRecentFiles:=False, _
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, _
EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False­, _
SaveFormsData:=False, _
SaveAsAOCLetter:=False, _
Encoding:=msoEncodingUTF8, _
InsertLineBreaks:=False, _
AllowSubstitutions:=False, _
LineEnding:=wdCRLF

oDoc.Close Savechanges:=False
Set oDoc = Nothing
End Sub

Peter Jamieson

 

[bilisa]

Thank you Peter

What I meant was that even if your data source is a Unicode Text file, you
may not avoid the encoding dialog that pops up when you open a file.
However, if you save as a Word document then use that as a data source, I
think you will be OK - if the data source is large, just be prepared for a
slow start to the merge.

Some sample conversion macros...

Sub ConvertToUTF8()
' convert to a UTF8 format text file

' Needs error checking etc.
Dim oDoc as Word.Document

' change msoEncodingWestern to be the encoding you need. I think this should
work.

Set oDoc = Documents.Open("the path name of the file you need to
convert.txt", _
False, , False, , , , , , _
wdOpenFormatEncodedText, _
msoEncodingWestern, _
False, False, , True)

' Several of the parameters here are optional or
' irrelevant - you can probably remove the lines from
' ReadOnlyRecommended to SaveAsAOCLetter

oDoc.SaveAs _
FileName:="the path name of the file to convert to.txt", _
FileFormat:=wdFormatUnicodeTex­t, _
AddToRecentFiles:=False, _
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, _
EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False­, _
SaveFormsData:=False, _
SaveAsAOCLetter:=False, _
Encoding:=msoEncodingUTF8, _
InsertLineBreaks:=False, _
AllowSubstitutions:=False, _
LineEnding:=wdCRLF

oDoc.Close Savechanges:=False
Set oDoc = Nothing
End Sub

or

Sub ConvertToWord()
' convert to a Word document file

' Needs error checking etc.
Dim oDoc as Word.Document

' change msoEncodingWestern to be the encoding you need. I think this should
work.

Set oDoc = Documents.Open("the path name of the file you need to
convert.txt", _
False, , False, , , , , , _
wdOpenFormatEncodedText, _
msoEncodingWestern, _
False, False, , True)

' Several of the parameters here are optional or
' irrelevant - you can probably remove the lines from
' ReadOnlyRecommended to Encoding

oDoc.SaveAs _
FileName:="the path name of the file to convert to.doc", _
FileFormat:=wdFormatDocument, _
AddToRecentFiles:=False, _
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, _
EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False­, _
SaveFormsData:=False, _
SaveAsAOCLetter:=False, _
Encoding:=msoEncodingUTF8, _
InsertLineBreaks:=False, _
AllowSubstitutions:=False, _
LineEnding:=wdCRLF

oDoc.Close Savechanges:=False
Set oDoc = Nothing
End Sub

Peter Jamieson