My merge field is being cut off in my word doc - any thoughts????

[Delta G]

I just set up a mergefield of a memo field and the word doc is not merging
the info. It is capturing only 255 characters. - as if it were a text field
of 255 characters..... Where am I going wrong??

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You probably aren't going wrong at all. There are real problems in this
area.

Which version of Word, and what is the data source? (Excel, Word, Access,
don't know?)

if the answer is Word 2002/2003, and the data source is Excel or Access, try
the following:

check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at Open", go through
the process of connecting to the data source again, and select the DDE
option when it is offered.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Delta G]

Peter,
I have Word 2000 and am using Access 2003 with a 2000 Mdb file. I selected
the Confirm conversion at open box and then connected to my data source. If
I choose the DDE option I get an error that says that Word cannot establish a
DDE connection. The only way I can get the connetion to establish is to use
the ODBC option. And I still have the same problem with the word merge field
being cut off with the 255th character. As an academic exercise I opened
the Query using MS SQL - the fields were cut off @ 255 characters in the
query. I appreciate you help - any other thoughts would be helpful. Thanks

 

[Peter Jamieson]

it's a real pain, isn't it?

I have Word 2000 and am using Access 2003 with a 2000 Mdb file. I
selected
the Confirm conversion at open box and then connected to my data source.
If
I choose the DDE option I get an error that says that Word cannot
establish a
DDE connection.

When you try to connect using DDE, Access is likely to pop up one or more
boxes (e.g. macro security check and perhaps a database password dialog box
or workgroup login dialog). You don't always see these because they are not
necessarily dislayed in the foreground, so it's advisable to use alt-tab to
switch to Access and see what it's doing.

But you may already have done all that, in which case...
a. Is the database, or Access, already open when you try to connect?
b. When you open your database in Access, does it change the database name
in the title bar?
c. Is Access Tools|Options|Advanced|"Ignore DDE requests" checked?

The only other workaround I know of is that if you have 63 columns of data
or less, you can open the database in Access, select the table name in the
list of tables in the Database dialog box, and drag-and-drop it into an
empty Word document. Then, in Word, delete the first row (it contains the
table name), save the document and use that as your data source.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Delta G]

It is insane....I'll try it out as soon as I have time (I need to get some
work done!!!) I'll post my progress....Ultimately I may need to modify the
merge setup to reduce the field size - You would think MS would get this
ironed out.....