Re: Mail merge source document hangs on opening

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From: Nolan (Nolan_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 12/20/04 

Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:19:09 -0800

Cindy - thanks for your response. I think that you may be onto something.
When I made the change, the Word document opened much faster. This has led
to a new problem however. Once I have disconnected from the data file and
reconnected, the merged document has lost all of the formating that was in
the document originally. For example, the dates are in scientifc notation
and the numbers don't read like 100,000 they read 100000. This is another
thing that I noticed when we changed to Office XP - it wasn't very easy to
change the location of the data file. This data file has over 200 columns of
data. The merged document is 35 pages of text and numbers and it would be
extremely tedious to go through and have to reformat this document. Is there
a way to change the data source file and not lose the formating?
Interestingly, the formating is correct in the excel file.

Thanks for your help.
Nolan

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" wrote:

> Hi =?Utf-8?B?Tm9sYW4=?=,
>
> Hmmm, hard to say. Can you tell if the problem is more frequent when lots of
> applications are open and running? Or if you've been using Word and/or Excel for
> an extended period of time? Right off hand, I'd say it's not a Word problem, per
> se, but a problem with something in Windows communicating per DDE.
>
> Note that with Excel you'd have a choice of three additional connection methods
> that certainly wouldn't cause this problem. You might try connecting a couple of
> the main merge documents using ODBC and see if that's more stable for you.
>
> Activate "Confirm conversions on open" in Tools/Options/General, then re-connect
> to the Excel work***. Select ODBC from the list of connections methods that
> will be displayed. If you're currently selecting "just a work***" (as opposed
> to a named range), then you'll need to click "Options" and activate the
> checkboxes that appear in order to include worksheets in the listing.
>
> > This problem started when we switched from our old computers running Office
> > 97 and Windows 95 to our new Dell computers that run Office XP and Windows XP
> > (SP2).
> >
> > The only times that this problem doesn't occur is after a reboot. It will
> > work for a while and then hang again. When everything works like it should,
> > the following messages appear:
> >
> > Opening Source Document
> > Starting Excel
> > Waiting for Microsoft Excel to accept DDE Commands
> > Opening Data File
> > Requesting Query information from Microsoft Excel
> >
> > When the system hangs, it does so during the third step - Waiting for
> > Microsoft Excel to accept DDE Commands. The dark blue bar at the top of the
> > screen turns into a faded blue bar. After rebooting the computer, if I want
> > to open the source document again, I get the following message: "The
> > document xxxx.doc caused a serious error the last time it was opened. Would
> > you like to continue opening it?" When I select "Yes", the file opens as it
> > should've in the first place and is ready to merge.
> >
> > I have tried many things (including playing with the video settings), but
> > nothing has worked so far.
> >
> > Any suggestons?
> >
>
> Cindy Meister
> INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
> http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
> http://www.word.mvps.org
>
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
> in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)
>
>

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