Why is my merge data being truncated?

[sinplicity]

I am merging job vacancy information into a Word document. One of my fields
is a Description field that runs to a few paragraphs in the Excel
spreadsheet. When I merge it into Word, it's cutting off everything after the
255th character. Is this a fixed maximum for the MergeField code? Is there a
way around this so I can merge into a field of more than 255 characters?

 

[Doug Robbins]

It's a carryover from the days when 255 characters was the maximum that you
could insert in an Excel cell. Try one of the other methods of connecting
to the datasource that will become available to you if you select Options
from the Tools menu and go to the General tab and check the "Confirm
conversions at open box"

The other work around would be to copy and paste the information into
individual Word documents and in the mailmerge data source, include the path
and filename of each with \\ as the path separator and then use an
{INCLUDETEXT {MAILMERGE Docname}} field in the mailmerge main document.

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Please respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
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Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[sinplicity]

Try one of the other methods of connecting
to the datasource that will become available to you if you select Options
from the Tools menu and go to the General tab and check the "Confirm
conversions at open box"

This worked a treat. Turns out that, without the "Confirm conversions"
option enabled, Word defaults to the OLE DB Database option, which truncates
cells at 255 characters. It wasn't happy with the DDE option at all, and the
ODBC option mimicked the OLE option, but the Converter works just fine, as
long as you don't mind having to confirm the Conversion every time you open
the document for merging (unlike the ODBC and OLE merges). It's worth the
small hassle for the ability to marge larger cells, though.

The other work around would be to copy and paste the information into
individual Word documents and in the mailmerge data source, include the path
and filename of each with \\ as the path separator and then use an
{INCLUDETEXT {MAILMERGE Docname}} field in the mailmerge main document.

This would work if we were talking about 1 or 2 cells, but when the list
runs into the 100s, it's just a little insane.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

It certainly did. Thank you.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I had the same problem!

why is this limitation of 255? It is exactly 2 byte...but
why?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

It's a carryover from the days when that was the maximum length of the
contents of an Excel cell.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Guest]

Ok, It turned out that Mail merge has its limits. With
the converter method at seems that all text was merged
from out the excel database. But at a closer look, the
problem still appeared to a few merge fields. So in 80
percent the mail merge field contains all the data (for
example 600 characters) and in 20 percent the 255
characters appeared instead of the full data.

I have called Microsoft and they did know about this
thread, but didn't came up with a solution.

Could anyone help me with this problem?

 

[Sandy]

What converter did you use to convert the Xcel data to bring in more than 255
data?

 

[Emily]

I am having the same issue (excel to word) and am unsure how to make the
converter work. Can anyone elaborate?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The Excel converter is not provided as standard in recent versions of Word.
It used to be part of a thing called the "Office Converter Pack" that you
can download from the Microsoft website somewhere, but for some reason
Microsoft no longer provides this particular converter. I think you can get
it from Graham Mayor's site at

http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm

Peter Jamieson

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?RW1pbHk=?=,

I am having the same issue (excel to word) and am unsure how to make the
converter work. Can anyone elaborate?

The "converter" would be a fourth option listed in the "methods" box: OLE
DB, ODBC, DDE and the Spreadsheet converter. If you're not seeing this,
then it isn't installed and it will be difficult to obtain it...

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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