Mail Merge issue

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- 10 Nov 2003 15:36 GMT

I'm attempting to merge an Excel Spreadsheet with a table
in Microsoft word... When the merge fields are inserted
into the table in Word, everything looks ok, this changes
when the documents are merged, for the first 2 fields the
data is merged without any problem, the other fields merge
into one of the cells in the Word table.

Any Suggestions about what this could be and how the
problem can be cured?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Peter Jamieson - 11 Nov 2003 17:42 GMT

Not sure what you have here.

Are you saying that
a. in your mail merge main document you have (for example) a 5-column,
1-row Word table and you have one { MERGEFIELD } field in each cell
b. when you merge, the first two columns are merging OK, but all the other
3 fields actually merge into a single column (perhaps the 3rd column) in the
output table?

Or something completely different?

Probably worth mentioning which version of WOrd/Excel you are using too.

--
Peter Jamieson
MS Word MVP

> I'm attempting to merge an Excel Spreadsheet with a table
> in Microsoft word... When the merge fields are inserted
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reply to this Message

Alex Lush - 12 Nov 2003 08:44 GMT

not sure if i have the same problem here but I have a
merge set up to pull data from excel into word.

one of the fields appears to be pulling out the correct
data from excel then adding the remainder of the row from
the excel sheet, its as though it hasn't realised that its
reached the end of the cell and just carried on.

this only happens on certain records, only in one field.

using word and excel 97 on win98.

Thanks.

>-----Original Message-----
>Not sure what you have here.
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
>
>.

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- 12 Nov 2003 10:05 GMT

Please excuse the poor attempt at diagrams:

Ms Word Table:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Name | Member No. | DateOfBirth | Height | Weight| Medical
-----------------------------------------------------------
<<merge fields in this row of the word table>>
-----------------------------------------------------------
There are more rows containing spaces for 30 exercise
sessions (manually filled in when printed, easch exercise
session has cells for session number, date, signature of
supervisor.

The excel table looks exactly the same but filled in with
the details of 5 members of the gym:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Name | Member No. | DateBirth | Height | Weight| Medical
-----------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
--------------------------------------------------------etc

When Merged:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Name | Member No. | DateBirth | Height | Weight| Medical
-----------------------------------------------------------
Name | Member No. | DateBirth |Height/Weight/Medical |~|~|
-----------------------------------------------------------

~ denotes blank field...

I hope this explains or can give a better impression of
the problem... I'm using Word and Excel 2000.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Reply to this Message

Peter Jamieson - 12 Nov 2003 11:00 GMT

My best guess is that you have " characters in your data - probably in the
height column.

If so, possible workarounds include:
a. Use the "in" abbreviation for inches instead of "
b. Go through the data source connection process again, and check "Select
method" in the Open Data Source dialog. When asked, choose the converter
option. (You are probably currently using the DDE option, and in this case
my guess is that if you try the ODBC option, the data will be blank for the
height field).

It may be possible to format the column differently in Excel to work around
this problem but you'd have to ask an Excel expert that question.

--
Peter Jamieson
MS Word MVP

> Please excuse the poor attempt at diagrams:
>
[quoted text clipped - 35 lines]
>
> Many thanks in advance for your help.

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