OLE, Converter, DDE or ODBC?

[Daniel]

I am setting up a Word file to merge with an Excel
spreadsheet. There will be only one record containing no
more than 30 fields, but there will be greater than 50
and less than 200 links (tables, graphs and individual
cells) utilized.

Which data source - OLE, DDE, Converter or ODBC should be
selected? I want the Word file to be as small, efficient
and FAST as possible.

Thanks . Daniel

 

[Peter Jamieson]

We need more info. on this one.

What kind of links? Do you mean you want to end up with links from Word
(what kind? what should be the overall effect?) or do you mean that you have
50-200 links in your 30 Excel fields? Or what? EIther way, creating certain
kinds of links using data in merge fields is not usually straightforward.

Which version of Word/Excel?

Just guessing, but it sounds to me as if you might be better off avoiding
Mailmerge and using VBA to do the necessary work.

 

[Daniel]

By links I mean Copy (graphs, tables where math
calculation are preformed and individual cells) from
Excel (from Office '03) and Paste Special/Linked (both
Excel Worksheet Objects and text) into Word (from
Office '03). The overall effect is to produce 80 - 140
page documents that incorporate throughout the document
the steps and results from math calculations/scenarios
from Excel.

This previously were done within a single WordPerfect
file. WordPerfect contains excellent math capabilities
and floating cell functionalities, but Word/Excel is far
more commonly utilized; therefore training of new hires
hopefully will be easier.
I hope this explains a little better.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What I am uncertain about is the relationship between the data you are
thinking of using as the data source and the links. Are you hoping to
incorporate different graphs etc. depending on what data is in the data
source or what?

My general feeling at the moment is that you may be expecting too much of
Mailmerge (because you may not have discovered how text-oriented mailmerge
is and how unpredictable the results of Word's "field language" can be),
using nested { LINK } fields etc. and that it may be much more reliable to
use VBA to do the automation necessary to build your document and format the
various graphical items the way you want.

So, e.g., have you already verified that all the things you want to do can
be done using Mailmerge, regardless of the connection method?