mail merge refresh data

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joe schmo - 10 Jul 2007 19:48 GMT

I have Office 2007. Before our upgrade from Office 2000, with a mailmerge,
it will open up the excel sheet. In this excel sheet we had a 'refresh data'
macro that would update the fields automatically upon open.

With 2007, it doesn't "open" the excel sheet and therefore the sheet (data)
does not get updated. Is there anyway to get around this so when I open up
the mailmerge the data in the excel sheet is updated?

thanks.

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 11 Jul 2007 03:52 GMT

In Word, click on the Pizza Button and then on the Word Options item on the
bottom border of the dialog that appears and then click on the Advanced item
in the Word Options list and scroll down to the General section of the
dialog and check the box against the "Confirm file format conversion on
Open"

Then when you attach the data source to the mail merge main document, you
should be presented with a dialog in which you can select the method by
which the data source is attached. Selecting the DDE method will probably
give you back the functionality that you previously were used to.

I do question however, why the spreadsheet is needing to be updated.

Signature

Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

>I have Office 2007. Before our upgrade from Office 2000, with a mailmerge,
> it will open up the excel sheet. In this excel sheet we had a 'refresh
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> thanks.

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joe schmo - 11 Jul 2007 15:48 GMT

The spreadsheet needs to be updated because it gets its data from an oracle
database. Yes, I've tried the DDE method, but it's much too slow with office
2007. I think there may be an msquery section in tools or something, I'll
check it out.

> In Word, click on the Pizza Button and then on the Word Options item on the
> bottom border of the dialog that appears and then click on the Advanced item
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> >
> > thanks.

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 12 Jul 2007 02:56 GMT

I would suggest using a Query in Access that makes use of a table(s) that is
linked to the Oracle database.

Signature

Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

> The spreadsheet needs to be updated because it gets its data from an
> oracle
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
>> >
>> > thanks.

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Peter Jamieson - 12 Jul 2007 09:57 GMT

In Word 2007, you should be able to link directly to an Oracle table or view
using either the Microsoft's OLE DB provider or ODBC driver for Oracle
databases or Oracle's own driver/provider. Microsoft's provider/driver only
supports Oracle up to version 6 but may work OK with later versions of
Oracle as long as you do not need to use features that did not exist in 6.

Or you can do it the way Doug suggests, which would also use the MS or
Oracle ODBC provider and should allow you to create the query you really
need if you are not allowed to create what you need on the server itself.
It's probably also simpler than the "direct" method.

To do it "directly" from Word, you either have to use MS Query, which uses
ODBC, or rather more directly using OLE DB, in which case you have to set up
a ".odc" file (Office Data Connection) file. To do that in Word, when you
get to the "Select Data Source dialog", you should see a "New Source"
button. Click that, and select "Oracle" to use Microsoft's provider, or
Other/advanced if you have Oracle's OLE DB provider installed (after that,
you have to choose the correct provider). During theis process a .odc file
is created which you then select as the data source.

Unfortunately, to make it all work, you will probably end up having to embed
your login/password information either into the Word .document itself or
into the .odc file.

Peter Jamieson

> The spreadsheet needs to be updated because it gets its data from an
> oracle
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
>> >
>> > thanks.

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