Word Mailmerge Slowdown

[mpierce]

I am trying to use Word to perform a relatively complex mailmerge. The
document has about 70 variable fields with many of them containing
if...then logic. It also contains textboxes. I am merging in a dbase
file with 30,000 records.

When the mailmerge starts it takes off and merges the first 20 records
in a couple seconds (total). But by the 200th record it is taking
almost 10 seconds per merge, and it continues to slow down from there.
Is this a bug in the software? Is there a variable being built or a
sort happening that is getting larger and larger with each merge?

I used to perform a similar process many years ago with an older
version of Word (95 I think) and these large complex merges worked
without a slowdown. At the time I remember a new version of Word
coming out (97 I think) and it had introduced this slowdown. At the
time I just reverted back to the previous version.

Thanks in advance for any insight,
Mike

 

[Mike]

Mike,

When you say dbase what are you referring to (I'm assuming you're not
referring to dBase)? If you're using a .csv/.tab file as your datasource
then that's a known issue. The solution is to switch to .MDB or another
datasource type.

Mike

 

[mpierce]

Database file is a .DBF dbase file.

 

[Mike]

Mike,

Are you using ODBC or OLE DB? If you're using ODBC try switching to OLE DB
if possible.

Thanks.

Mike