merging a text file in word

[Wernie]

I have a text file that consists of more field codes than Access or Excel can
handle that needs to be merged into a Word document. When I used Word 2000
for this purpose my mail merges were very fast. I could print and sort
through records pretty rapidly. Upon, upgrading to Word 2002 and Word 2003,
these same mail merges take an extremely longer time to complete. I have
tried reverting back to some of the old connection methods that were used in
Word 2000, but with very little luck. The only option I get that works is to
connect using a text file, which unfortunately for me gives me the result of
having a very slow template. Is there a way to force a different connection,
using a text file that will be similar to the way that Word 2000 interprets
text files? Thanks

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?V2Vybmll?=,

I have a text file that consists of more field codes than Access or Excel can
handle that needs to be merged into a Word document. When I used Word 2000
for this purpose my mail merges were very fast. I could print and sort
through records pretty rapidly. Upon, upgrading to Word 2002 and Word 2003,
these same mail merges take an extremely longer time to complete. I have
tried reverting back to some of the old connection methods that were used in
Word 2000, but with very little luck. The only option I get that works is to
connect using a text file, which unfortunately for me gives me the result of
having a very slow template. Is there a way to force a different connection,
using a text file that will be similar to the way that Word 2000 interprets
text files?

Which other connection methods have you tried? It's not really clear from your
problem description? In general terms, Word 2003 will offer you
- OLE DB (SLOW)
- ODBC (should be OK, but could have other issues)
- Word's internal text file converter ("your mileage may vary")

Only the last two would have been available in Word 2000; ODBC might not have
been present.

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

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[Wernie]

Cindy,

Thanks for your response. After about a year long of digging and searching
various newsgroups, I was able to finally figure out a work-around for my
issue. What I had to do was save my file as a "Word 97-2002 and 6.0/95
-rtf.doc." Once the file was saved, I then had to close the file. Then
re-open the new file, specify the header and record delimeters for my field
codes, then save the file back in its original word.doc format. Upon
completion my file moves about as fast as it did when I was using Word 2000.
This seems to have worked for now, but only time will tell. Hope this
information will help someone else who may encounter a very slow mail merge
in the future. Thanks again.