Word ties up the datasource

[John Sutton]

I have Word 2002, W98.
My datasource is a .csv created from an old DOS application. The
datasource is reused over and over and is created local to each user
machine, and the templates are created to access this datasource. I
have found that if Windows has the datasource open, then the DOS app.
cannot open the correct file and will route the contents to whatever
happens to be attached to LPT1. Reasonable solution, I guess, is to
not have the datasources open. Occasionally, I get a situation where I
cannot find that the datasource is open, yet the DOS App. cannot get
access to the file, and you have to shut down Word and re-open it,
which sometimes doesn't work, in which case your only recourse is to
restart your machine. This can get to happening several times a day,
so any thoughts or suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks
John

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The only suggestion I can make that seems likely to have a chance is the
obvious one - i.e. modify each Word template and/or document that uses this
datasource so that it makes a copy of the original file when the document is
created or opened, e.g. using VBA Open/Get/Put/Close in an AutoOpen and/or
AutoNew macro. Then use the copy as the data source. That way, the original
data source will only be opened for a short time by Word and the problem
should at least be substantially reduced even though it might still occur.