Header Record Delimiters dialog when opening mailmerge document

[Emlyn B]

I have created a mailmerge document which uses a datafile (saved as a text
file). This would look like below:


DATE_REPORT}RUN_ID}TEMPLATE_ID
}SPAIDEN_PIDM}SPAIDEN_ID}HUS_ID}SURNAME}FIRST_NAME}MIDDLE_NAME}DATE_BIRTH}DEGR_CODE}DEGR_LONG_TITLE}DEGR_FIELD_STUDY}DEGR_CLASS}DEGR_PROF_STATUS$
27 January
2009}1010722}DSUPP.TXT}999999}00012345}123456789}xx}xxxx}xxxx}xxxx}1101}xxxx:
ARCHITECTURE}ARCHITECTURE}Upper Second}Royal Institute of British Architects$

When I first create the document in 2007 Word I would expect to be prompted
to set the delimiters, which would be } for the field delimiter and $ for the
record delimiter. However after saving it, when I go back into the document,
I get prompted to set the delimiter again in the 'Header Record Delimiters'
dialog box again. I have just converted the document from 2003 Word and I was
not prompted to enter the delimiters again each time I opened the document.
So, my question is why is 2007 Word not recognising my first recording of the
delimiters. Would there be a way of resolving this since when our users will
use this document, they would not be able to understand the 'Header Record
Delimiters' dialog? Many thanks Emlyn

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Assuming you are seeing the dialog box that asks you for both the field
and record delimiters, you may be able to fix this by saving your mail
merge mqain document as a Word 97-2003 format .doc rather than a .docx.
Daft, but (I hope) true.

If you are seeing the dialog box that only asks you for the field
delimiter then the merge won't work if you are trying to use a record
delimiter of "$" - let us know if that is what is happening.


Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Emlyn B]

Thank I will try these tomorrow and let you know the results. As an aside, if
the delimiter of '$' cannot be used even though it is given as an option in
the list, what would be the better delimiters to use in your experience? I
should say commas have been avoided since they may be part of the text and
thus cause problems when mail merging.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Re the "$", just to clarify:

Word has several ways to connect to a text file. The two main ones in
recent versions of Word are:
a. use an internal text converter. This method lets you select the
field delimiter and the record delimiter from two lists that it presents
in its dialog box.
b. use OLE DB. In this case, Word might or might not prompt you for a
delimiter, but if it does, it will only ask you for a field delimiter:
the record delimiter has to be a carriage return/linefeed (or some such).

It isn't completely obvious to me how Word decides what to use, but as
far as I know if it /cannot/ connect using (b), it will try (a).


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Emlyn B]

Hello

I did as you advised: I saved the document Word 97-2003 format .doc rather
than a .docx and it opened without prompting. Thanks for your help.

It is a shame and a little disappointing that .docx does not work as before.

Many thanks