Descriptions coming from an Excel database are randomly cut

[fcolli]

I use mailmerge to produce a report made of pages with the same structure (Word2002) and containing fields with informations of a variable lenght (mostly comments and descriptions). The variable informations are stored into an external Excel2002 database
The amount of informations (the lenght of the string) contained in each field can be very variable, ranging from fields almost empty to others with even more than one thousand of characters

Problem
Randomly, and for no appearent reason, the fields in Word mailmerge result cut (for instance, in the middle of a word). The cut does not happen regularly at a certain length of the string.
The output, therefore, is not reliable to me, and it forces me - with a great effort - to double check the outputs and to correct the errors manually

Note that there seem not to be a problem with the field lenght, since I have complete forms with very long descriptions and others which are cut even having originally shorter descriptions

Thank you for your kind attention and for your help
Francesco Colli

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?ZmNvbGxp?=,

We see this reported for merges from Excel using an OLE DB connection (the default for
Word 2002 and 2003).

Your best bet is to go back to one of the older connection technologies. You'll find
information on how to do this in the Word 2002 section of my website's mail merge FAQ.

I use mailmerge to produce a report made of pages with the same structure (Word2002) and

containing fields with informations of a variable lenght (mostly comments and
descriptions). The variable informations are stored into an external Excel2002 database.

The amount of informations (the lenght of the string) contained in each field can be

very variable, ranging from fields almost empty to others with even more than one thousand
of characters.

Problem:
Randomly, and for no appearent reason, the fields in Word mailmerge result cut (for

instance, in the middle of a word). The cut does not happen regularly at a certain length
of the string.

The output, therefore, is not reliable to me, and it forces me - with a great effort -

to double check the outputs and to correct the errors manually.
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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