Running mail merge on another computer

[John Williams]

I have a mail merge main document (Word 2003) which uses a query
(view) from an Access (2003) database as its data source.

The data source is saved as a Microsoft Office Data Connection (.ODC)
file in the My Data Sources folder. The .ODC file is an HTML/XML
document containing folders specific to my computer.

I want to transfer the mail merge files (main document, database and
..ODC file) to another computer so that the mail merge can be run on
that computer. However because the .ODC file contains folder names
specific to my computer, it won't work on the other computer because
it has different folders.

What is the recommended method for running a mail merge on another
computer? Obviously I could require the user to recreate the data
source connection within Word, but is there a way of creating a
portable data source connection? If the folder names in the .ODC file
were relative instead of absolute that would solve the problem. Is
there a GUI for editing .ODC files?

Thanks for any help/info.

 

[Doug Robbins]

Maybe the simplest thing is to use the datasource on the original computer
to create a directory type mailmerge by inserting the mergefields into the
cell of a one row table in the directory mail merge main document, then
after executing the merge, insert a row at the top of the table in the
result and insert the mergefield names into that row, then save that file
and attach it to the original mailmerge main document as the data source.
Then move both of the files to the other computer. Low tech, but it will
work.

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Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[John Williams]

Thanks for your reply, however I don't understand it! It might be simpler
to just recreate the data connection on the other computer.