Mail merge to Excel

[james]

When I merge data from an Excel sheet, only the first 259
characters are retrieved in any particular field. Is this
a known problem - any fixes (other than splitting the data
between 2 fields)?

I'm using Office 2003.

Thanks

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi James,

When I merge data from an Excel sheet, only the first 259
characters are retrieved in any particular field. Is this
a known problem - any fixes (other than splitting the data
between 2 fields)? Office 2003

This is a known problem, yes. But I think you might be able
to get around it by changing the connection method; worth a
try, anyway.

Tools/Options/General, activate "Confirm conversions on
open".

Now try the four possible connection methods offered after
you've selected the data source. for these tests, your merge
data needs to be on the first sheet, top-left, of the
workbook. OLE DB is the one that's not working for you,
currently (the default).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun
8 2004)
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

 

[james]

DDE solved the problem, but only seemed to pick up the
first 16 columns in the data source. I'm able to get
round this quite easily though.

Thanks for your help.

James

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi James,

DDE solved the problem, but only seemed to pick up the
first 16 columns in the data source. I'm able to get
round this quite easily though.

FWIW, it should pick up a lot more than 16 columns. Might
be a problem with an empty column in between, or a "bad"
field name?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jun 8 2004)
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