Missing one data from one column from Excel

[swimdad16]

I am running Office 2003. I export a CSV file from an application. I then
save the CSV as an Excel file, XLS, that is used as input into a Mail Merge.

One of the columns, and numeric field that represents the students school
grade, does not show up in word.

If I look at Merge Recipients I see the column but there are no values in
the field.

What would cause Word to ignore that field?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What would cause Word to ignore that field?

Don't know, but...

Assuming there isn't somethig weird about the column name, It's possible
that the OLEDB provider/ODBC driver that Word uses to get the data has got
mixed up about the type of data in the column, but a quick experiements here
suggests that's unlikely. A few questions:
a. what format does Excel think the cells have (General?). Does it display
any little warning triangles in the corners of the cells?
b. How is the .csv formatted? e.g. is it actually comma-delimited, or is
another character used? Are the values quoted, e.g. using "". Do the numbers
have "thousands separators," e.g. like "123,456.78". If so, what are they,
and what character is used for the decimal point (i.e. are they like
123,456.78, 123.456,78 or what? - and what do your system settings expect?
c. as possible workarounds...
- try using the .csv directly as a data source
- open the .csv in Word, save as .doc, and use that
- change the connection method to the Excel sheet and/or .csv (Word
Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversions at open, then reconnect tot he
source and select the method in the additional dialog box)

Peter Jamieson

 

[swimdad16]

I searched the web again last night and found a website that described the
problem. I don't recall the name right now.

Based on that website it was related to the ODBC/OLE connection between
Excel and Word. Evidently, Word looks at the first 8 line of the excel file
to set the type for the column. Even though I tried to format it as a
number, text and general in Excel, Word comes up with it's own format based
on what it sees in the first 8 rows.

Since many of my entries were blank Word somehow ignored the rows that had
numbers.

I fixed the problem by changing all the blanks cells into zeroes... now it
works as expected.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.