Mail Merge problems

[Darren Dassinger]

Hi Everyone,
I’ve been working on a mail merge problem for a few weeks and I don’t know what to try any longer. The problem in a nut shell is that the source file is OCCASIONALLY not readable.

We have a DDE interface to Word that has been working in a number of environments for years (I know this is old, but it’s also not my decision to update it). We one new customer that is having this issue, all other customers are working fine. When we ask for the data source (another word doc) OR number of fields to merge with and we don’t get back a value. The strange thing is that it will work sometimes but not always. Also, it seems that once it stops working for a document, it will continue to fail for some time (sometimes for days) before mysteriously working again. To further mystify the problem, other workstations can use the same files without problem while another can not. Sometimes all workstations are fine, sometimes all have the problem.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance,
Darren


EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

 

[Peter Jamieson]

My rather obvious guess is that the user is doing something else that
involves DDE and that a DDE transactin is being blocked somewhere and
hanging up everything else. Since DDE is not that commonly used now (except
perhaps for conecting to Word data sources!) that might explain why only one
user is experiencing those problems.

If so, what could it be? Well, I don't know. The Windows file manager
sometimes stil uses DDE to launch applications; anything using MS Query uses
DDE; the GoldMine contact management system uses it (not sure whether that
is still popular) to control Word; Word, Excel and Access can all act as DDE
servers and Word - and perhaps Excel - can fairly easily initiate DDE
conversations (DDE/DDEAUTO fields in Word's case).

I also wonder whether you could provide the client with a simpler DDE-based
application of some kind to see if other DDE conversations are blocvked when
the problem occurs - for example, a simple Word document with an AUTODDE or
DDE field, or perhaps one of the tools in the old DDE toolkit (DDESpy? I
can't remember now!)

Peter Jamieson

in message
news:[email protected]...