Retrieving status info from Word 2000 Mail Merge

[Richard]

I'm using Automation in VB6 to launch a Word 2000 Mail Merge operation
of up to 20,000 records (via a DDE connection to an Access 2000
query). I'd like to make the Word app invisible, but would also like
to retrive the
constantly updating "Word is merging record..." status line
information to provide feedback to the user. Is there any way to do
this?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Richard,

I'm using Automation in VB6 to launch a Word 2000 Mail Merge operation
of up to 20,000 records (via a DDE connection to an Access 2000
query). I'd like to make the Word app invisible, but would also like
to retrive the
constantly updating "Word is merging record..." status line
information to provide feedback to the user. Is there any way to do
this?

Not really, no. Word doesn't provide, generally, a way to pick up
"status" announcements (you can't get "made n replacements" for
Find/Replace, either).

From Word 2002 onwards there are mail merge EVENTS that would let you
run your own counter. But in 2000 and earlier you have no possibility to
interfere with the merge execution, in any way.

You might experiment whether an ODBC connection is any faster. Also,
please note that the speed of mail merge execution is generally
proportionately slower, the more records that have to be merged.
(Merging twice 200 records is often measurably faster than merging 400
records in one go.) You might consider breaking the merge down into 1000
record chunks, for example.

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

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[Richard]

Thanks Cindy. I have broken it down into small chunks, and now I'm
playing with rolling my own merge anyways, retrieving each record in
turn and replacing the merge fields. But that is torturously slow
(mostly due to grabbing each data value in turn), even with only a
3x15 table per page with a half dozen fields per cell. (I'm assuming I
can't use ADO with Word 2000, right?) Oh well - it's not something the
client is going to run very often.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Richard,

I have broken it down into small chunks, and now I'm
playing with rolling my own merge anyways, retrieving each record in
turn and replacing the merge fields. But that is torturously slow
(mostly due to grabbing each data value in turn), even with only a
3x15 table per page with a half dozen fields per cell. (I'm assuming I
can't use ADO with Word 2000, right?) Oh well - it's not something the
client is going to run very often.

Sure, you can use ADO with Word; just not with mail merge. But yes, I
certainly agree this would be like warp speed compared to what you're
currently doing. Since you're doing this with VB6, you could do the ADO
part right in your app, and pass the values across to the Word doc
(instead of reading them through the Word doc's data source).

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