mail merge recipients

[MaryAlice]

I am having trouble with a mail merge between Word 2003 & Excel 2003 when I
use multiple merge criteria. I'm trying to select all those records in my
list with a particular year who do not have an email address. The year &
email address are stored in separate fields. It seems to have trouble when I
select blank emails after selecting the year I want. When you go back and
look at the advanced feature in the mail merge recipients, it has added
additional criteria I didn't ask it to.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Unfortunately, there are some errors in Word in this general area.

In this case, the simplest workaround is probably to change the way that
Word connects to Excel: check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm
conversions at open", go through the process of connecting to your Excel
sheet again, and select the DDE option when it is offered. (warning - if you
have a multi-sheet workbook, DDE will only connect to the currently open
sheet, or if the workbook is closed, the last sheet you had open. Or
something like that).

It might seem strange that changing the connection method might fix this
problem, but Word takes your filter criteria and generates an SQL query from
them. Because it is actually using a different dialect of SQL when you
connect using DDE, and gets the query code right.

If you can't use DDE then the only way to fix this (as far as I know) is to
use VBA to issue the correct SQL. We can go into that if necessary.

Peter Jamieson

 

[MaryAlice]

Thank you -- that explains another part of my confusion, which I forgot to
mention in my earlier post. We've been able to get this to work on some
machines and not on others. Now I realize it's because some had the DDE
option selected & some didn't.

Your help is much appreciated!