Getting 0's when merging

[thandy]

I'm trying to merge addresses from excel to word and although all the columns
are labelled, the information in two of them comes up as '0's and not the
information that is contained. No idea why its doing this as I have used
simular formatting for merging before and it was fine. Can anyone help?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Check Word Tools|Options|General|"COnfirm conversion at open", reconnect to
your data source, and choose the DDE option when it is offered.

This occurs because when the data types in an Excel column are mixed (e.g.
some things look like numbers and some things look like text), the OLEDB
provider that Word uses to get the data makes a choice based on which data
type predominates in the first 25 rows of the column. So even if it worked
before, changes to the data can change the behaviour. There are one or two
other approaches that may help, but the DDE one is generally the best
starting point.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Strange.

Are the addresses complete addresses in a single column in the Excel sheet,
or is each part (name, company, city, postcode etc. in a separate column in
the sheet?

Are you using an ADDRESSBLOCK field to insert your addresses?

If so,
a. you may need to "re-map" the column names in your Excel sheet (you
should be able to get to the right place in the Addressblock dialog) as it's
possible that the coumn names are coming into Word slightly differently
(It's the only thing I can think of that makes sense).
b. consider using the individual fields instead

Peter Jamieson