Word Merge Invalid Field in Merge

[Wendy]

Hi,

I have a very confused computer that is performing in a
way that has been duplicated on another computer at the
same location, but have not been able to duplicate at any
other location, nor can my friends duplicate the action.

Using the GoldMine program as a data source, and
performing a mail merge to Word 2000, if I merge to only
ONE contact name, the merge works perfectly like it should.

If I try to use the same template to merge to MORE THAN
ONE contact name, then the merge stuffs up and tells me
that there is an invalid field in the merge, and would I
like to select other fields (eg EXP001, EXP002, etc).

The GOldMine fields are all OK and are accessible
properly, the template is OK, any other template created
has same problems.

The datafile is a .dbf file, and appears accessible from
the Mail Merge function in Word (as if performing a
traditional mail merge).

As far as I have been able to troubleshoot, this problem
does not come from GoldMine (although I have the GM people
working on this angle, just in case).

The data transfered via a DDE call to Word.

I have removed the BDE totally from everywhere including
the registry and reinstalled, and have used a different
Link file from GM to Word (if it was this, then it
shouldn't have worked at all, I should think).

The 2 operating systems are Windows 2000 and XP, so
nothing in common there.

The ODBC driver has been reinstalled for Word, made no
difference.

The Normal.dot file has been recreated.

Has anyone ever seen this issue before, where a mail merge
will work perfectly with ONE contact, but NOT with
multiple contacts?

Has anyone any ideas of what might be causing this issue.

Is it a Word setting?

All help on this gratefully received.

Thanks

Wendy

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Wendy,

Never heard of this before. My gut-feeling is that there could be a problem
in the data source. That the second contact uses a different set of fields
than the single one, perhaps? Or there's a problem with the field names?
Unmatched apostrophe's or quotes?

Are you able to open the dbf file in Excel? Does it look OK there? And if you
then try to merge to the data in Excel format?

I have a very confused computer that is performing in a
way that has been duplicated on another computer at the
same location, but have not been able to duplicate at any
other location, nor can my friends duplicate the action.

Using the GoldMine program as a data source, and
performing a mail merge to Word 2000, if I merge to only
ONE contact name, the merge works perfectly like it should.

If I try to use the same template to merge to MORE THAN
ONE contact name, then the merge stuffs up and tells me
that there is an invalid field in the merge, and would I
like to select other fields (eg EXP001, EXP002, etc).

The GOldMine fields are all OK and are accessible
properly, the template is OK, any other template created
has same problems.

The datafile is a .dbf file, and appears accessible from
the Mail Merge function in Word (as if performing a
traditional mail merge).

As far as I have been able to troubleshoot, this problem
does not come from GoldMine (although I have the GM people
working on this angle, just in case).

The data transfered via a DDE call to Word.

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

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