Mail Merge is extremly slow in WIndows XP....

[Jeanne]

I have a letter in Word that I merge with a Database in
Excel on a daily base. The database has thousands of
records.

Before Windows XP I could find a record in a matter of
seconds and merge my letter.

Now it takes minutes to find the record. I could type the
informtion faster. However, that defeats the purpose of
the mail merge.

I have tried moving the data to a Word document and merge
it fron there, but it makes no difference.

Does any one know why this has happened and how it can be
fixed?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Jeanne,

1. Which version of Word are we discussing? Did you also
change Word version when you moved to Windows XP?

2. Is the data source saved locally, or is it on a network?

I have a letter in Word that I merge with a Database in
Excel on a daily base. The database has thousands of
records.

Before Windows XP I could find a record in a matter of
seconds and merge my letter.

Now it takes minutes to find the record. I could type the
informtion faster. However, that defeats the purpose of
the mail merge.

I have tried moving the data to a Word document and merge
it fron there, but it makes no difference.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep
30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[jeanne.berkheimer]

I am using Word 2002, we upgraded to Word 2002 from Word
2000 when we went to Windows XP

The document is a read only document in Excel and is
located on a network.

Thanks for your help!!

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi (e-mail address removed),

OK, as a first test, copy the file to your local drive and
set up a test merge to it. Is this appreciably faster?

The next thing I'd like to try is seeing if you get better
performance using a different connection method.
- Tools/Options/General
- activate "Confirm conversions on open"
- Go over Open Data source. Once you've selected the file
you'll get a list of available connection methods: DDE, OLE
DB, ODBC and Word's internal spreadsheet convert. Try with
each of these and see if you get any different performance
(over the network and locally)

I am using Word 2002, we upgraded to Word 2002 from Word
2000 when we went to Windows XP

The document is a read only document in Excel and is
located on a network.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep
30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow
question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail