D
Dean Price
Hi there,
I've recently had a strange problem reported by one of our clients. We've
written automation code to perform a mail merge. We've modified the example
given in the knowledge base, although not by much.
On our mail merge, for the addresses, we have six fields corresponding to
the six lines of the address possible (three address, 1 Town, 1 County, 1
Postcode). Our database is maintained in such as way that these six lines are
populated from the top down, so any blank fields are at the bottom. This
avoids awkard spaces in the address of the letter where they have a (for
example) Town and a Postcode, but no County.
These six fields are present on the mail merge template, each one on a new
line. (We strip carriage returns from the data before we store it in the
database).
When our users did a large (roughly 3700 letters) mail merge run, something
very strange happened.
Every blank line of the address was populated by the corresponding line from
the letter above it.
E.G
Letter A:
<<Line1>>: 123 Smith Street, (Line 1)
<<Line2>>: 'Scaramush Hollows' (Line 2)
<<Line3>>: Uplands (Line 3)
<<Line4>>: Gowerton (Town)
<<Line5>>: Camarthenshire (County)
<<Line6>>: SA8 6HG (Postcode)
Letter B
<<Line1>>: 65 Essex Road (Line 1)
<<Line2>>: Queensland (Line 2)
<<Line3>>: Bristol (Town)
<<Line4>>: BS1 4TG (Postcode)
<<Line5>>: Camarthenshire (County from letter A)
<<Line6>>: SA8 6HG (Postcode from letter A)
We use an Excel xls file as the data source, and the addresses were correct
in the file. Letter B's merge fields for lines 5 and 6 were blank.
I've since run the mail merge again, both manually (with the same data
source) and using our code (with similar quantities), without any problems.
The client's machines are all running Word 2003 SP2, and Windows XP (not
sure of the service pack, I believe it's SP2, but it could be SP3) They are
not the most powerful machines in the world, but they've been running this
code for a year now without this sort of problem being noticed before.
I've had a look for similar problems, and I noticed this issue in WD2000
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/204542 It's basically exactly the same issue
as that, but in Word 2003.
I'm beginning to clutch at straws here, especially since I can't reproduce
the problem (I tried on a terminal server running Windows Server 2003 R2
Enterprise edition with Word 2003 SP2 installed).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Dean
I've recently had a strange problem reported by one of our clients. We've
written automation code to perform a mail merge. We've modified the example
given in the knowledge base, although not by much.
On our mail merge, for the addresses, we have six fields corresponding to
the six lines of the address possible (three address, 1 Town, 1 County, 1
Postcode). Our database is maintained in such as way that these six lines are
populated from the top down, so any blank fields are at the bottom. This
avoids awkard spaces in the address of the letter where they have a (for
example) Town and a Postcode, but no County.
These six fields are present on the mail merge template, each one on a new
line. (We strip carriage returns from the data before we store it in the
database).
When our users did a large (roughly 3700 letters) mail merge run, something
very strange happened.
Every blank line of the address was populated by the corresponding line from
the letter above it.
E.G
Letter A:
<<Line1>>: 123 Smith Street, (Line 1)
<<Line2>>: 'Scaramush Hollows' (Line 2)
<<Line3>>: Uplands (Line 3)
<<Line4>>: Gowerton (Town)
<<Line5>>: Camarthenshire (County)
<<Line6>>: SA8 6HG (Postcode)
Letter B
<<Line1>>: 65 Essex Road (Line 1)
<<Line2>>: Queensland (Line 2)
<<Line3>>: Bristol (Town)
<<Line4>>: BS1 4TG (Postcode)
<<Line5>>: Camarthenshire (County from letter A)
<<Line6>>: SA8 6HG (Postcode from letter A)
We use an Excel xls file as the data source, and the addresses were correct
in the file. Letter B's merge fields for lines 5 and 6 were blank.
I've since run the mail merge again, both manually (with the same data
source) and using our code (with similar quantities), without any problems.
The client's machines are all running Word 2003 SP2, and Windows XP (not
sure of the service pack, I believe it's SP2, but it could be SP3) They are
not the most powerful machines in the world, but they've been running this
code for a year now without this sort of problem being noticed before.
I've had a look for similar problems, and I noticed this issue in WD2000
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/204542 It's basically exactly the same issue
as that, but in Word 2003.
I'm beginning to clutch at straws here, especially since I can't reproduce
the problem (I tried on a terminal server running Windows Server 2003 R2
Enterprise edition with Word 2003 SP2 installed).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Dean