Word was unable to open the data source.

[Michael Suttkus, II]

I have a mail merge to email document set up. It reads from a very
complicated Access query. When I first set it up, it worked perfectly.

Subsequently, when I have tried to open it, I get this error message:

"Word was unable to open the data source. "

Scanning through MSDN articles, the most probably relevant information I can
find is in this one:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318532

It claims that Word cannot (and hasn't been able to for five years and three
versions), run an SQL query with more than 255 characters. Well, my query
has over a thousand.

Since I ran the query successfully once (actually, several times the first
day), is this not actually the problem? Should I be looking for something
else?

Presuming that this is the problem, I can see no effective way of shortening
it. Does anyone know of any workaround to this problem?

 

[[MVP] S.Clark]

Decomplicate the Access Query. I'm gonna guess that you have about 15
instances of IIF() in it. Do I win a prize?

Feel free to post the SQL to get a second opinion

 

[danbuscaglia]

I have had similar problems automating a mail merge for the secretaries
at my office. The solution is to use the complicated query as a
maketable and run a simplified query off that table. It is easy to do
this all programmatically and I will post a solution if you would like.

 

[Michael Suttkus, II]

It did, but since I've gotten hold of it, I've whittled the number down to
four. Each is still multi-clause, though.