Mail merge from sql server

[Martin Stockwell]

Ok, heres the problem, you cant use the userdefined fields created in
Business contact manager in a mail merge to a word document (which i hope is
being addressed)... so.... i have found a useless document which explains how
to apprently connect to an sql data store with xml into a word document...

but it has left me going ga ga.... i have read it again and again, and non
of it makes sense...

will i be able to do what i want before waisting any more time on it....

1. create a simple word document
2. connect to the mssmlbiz database via xml / sql
3. use an asp (html) front end (apprently via this msdn document)
4. the result being a letter populated by the fileds i want from the sql
database from the choosen data from the asp page....

easy..... NOT...... PLEASE HELP!!!!! is there any template documents with
all these steps already done so i can look at it myself to better understand
what needs to be done....

thanks

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Is the article you are referring to

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285176/en-us

? If so, I think it describes a number of steps that you probably do not
need. But it's difficult to tell. For one thing, I don't have BCM and can't
experiment with its SQL Server backend.

1. create a simple word document
2. connect to the mssmlbiz database via xml / sql

As long as you have the necessary permissions to access the relevant data in
mssmlbiz from the Word instance you are using, you should be able to use the
SQL data directly as a data source for a Word merge. However, if BCM is not
accessed using your Windows user account that may not be straightforward.

3. use an asp (html) front end (apprently via this msdn document)
4. the result being a letter populated by the fileds i want from the sql
database from the choosen data from the asp page....

Do you /have/ to do this, or are you assuming from the above article that
the only way to do this is via asp/html?

There are a few ways to connect to SQL Server data from Word 2003 - the
"standard" one is to create a new .odc file, e.g. by clicking +New SQL
Server Connection.odc in Select Data Source, or clicking New Source...,
selecting Microsoft SQL Server, clicking Next, and taking it from there. The
trickiest part is likely to be getting the SQL Server Instance name correct.

Peter Jamieson