Some mailmerge fields doesnt get displayed upon change to WordXP

B

Bong Bides

Hi,

Does anyone have a clue on why some mailmerge fields fail
to display when using Word-OfficeXP but works perfectly
fine on Word-Office97? I am using the exact same document
on both machines. My form letter is pretty straightforward
as seen below. The letter loops through all the data and
displays all list items perfectly in Office97 but somehow
<<BranchHead>> gets lost when run in OfficeXP.

Please enlighten me. Thanks!



Reference Regn. No. Name of Co
--------------- ------------ ------------------------
<<Reference>> <<RegNo>> <<CompName>><<Next Rec if>>
<<Reference>> <<RegNo>> <<CompName>><<Next Rec if>>
..
..
..
<<Reference>> <<RegNo>> <<CompName>><<Next Rec if>>


Sincerely yours,
<<BranchHead>>
 
P

Peter Jamieson

No particular ideas, but
a. have you tried selecting the document (e.g. ctrl-A) in Word XP and
re-executing all the fields (F9)
b. what is the data source? In particular, is the field called BranchHead
actually called BranchHead in your data source, or something like Branch
Head, Branch-Head etc.? If Word XP is connecting in a different way to the
data source, it may also be transforming names in a slightly different way.
c. does the same mergefield work OK if it isn't at the end of the document?
d. Does the mergefield fail in all your letters or just the last one?
 
B

Bong Bides

Thanks for the inputs, Peter. =)

Ok, here are my answers:
(a) Refreshing the main document didnt solve the problem.
(b) Data source is a normal Word datasource with 16
columns that normally has around 20-30 records. I doubt
it very much if it goes past 100 records at any one time.
<<BranchHead>> in data source is spelled exactly the same
as in the mail merge field in the main document.
(c) When i moved the <<BranchHead>> field from the end of
the letter, the data it contained was displayed. I have no
idea why it did that. Moving the field to some other place
other than the end is not possible though. It has to be
there. =(
(d) It failed in all the letters.
 
P

Peter Jamieson

(c) When i moved the said:
the letter, the data it contained was displayed. I have no
idea why it did that.
Click to expand...

Nor me, but...
Moving the field to some other place
other than the end is not possible though. It has to be
there. =(
Click to expand...

....stuff you could try:
a. does it appear to be the fact that it is after the last <<Next if>>
field that causes it to go wrong? (I was just wondering if maybe it was
simply something like if you add an extra paragraph mark at the end, it
works)
b. Does using

{ BranchHead } or { REF BranchHead } instead of { MERGEFIELD BranchHead }
make any difference? (NB, this only has any possibility of working while
your data source is a Word document)
 
C

Cindy Meister -WordMVP-

Hi Bong,
(c) When i moved the <<BranchHead>> field from the end of
the letter, the data it contained was displayed. I have no
idea why it did that. Moving the field to some other place
other than the end is not possible though. It has to be
there. =(
Click to expand...
If you rename Normal.dot to NormalOld.dot, start up Word and
set up a new mail merge document to this data source, is the
problem still there?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jan
24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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