External data source

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Beau - 09 Nov 2004 23:40 GMT

Can you mail merge to an external data source without using odbc connection?

Can research sources be used as a data source?

Reply to this Message

Cindy M -WordMVP- - 10 Nov 2004 20:33 GMT

Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmVhdQ==?=,

> Can you mail merge to an external data source without using odbc connection?
>

Depends on what the data source supports. Generally, however, if it's not
Excel or Access you need ODBC. Or an OLE DB provider if Word 2002 or 2003 is
used.

> Can research sources be used as a data source?

I don't know what these are. But Word mail merge does require a file, saved to
disk, in flat-table format.

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 :-)

Reply to this Message

Beau - 10 Nov 2004 23:36 GMT

We want to connect to an external source as our secondary data source for
letters in Word, however, my boss does not want users to be able to save the
data anywhere, ie. and Excel spreadsheet or even use Excel in any way.

The question about Research was meant to refer to the Research task pane in
Word - I didn't think there was a connection to mail merge, however, someone
else thought there was a connection.

> Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmVhdQ==?=,
>
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
> reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

Reply to this Message

Beau - 11 Nov 2004 00:00 GMT

We need to be able to access the secondary data source from a server without
users being able to save the data source in any way (i.e. as an Excel file)
in the process. Do you think this is possible?

The reference to Research was to the Research task pane in Word. Someone had
suggested it could be used as a secondary data source.

> Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmVhdQ==?=,
>
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
> reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

Reply to this Message

Cindy M -WordMVP- - 11 Nov 2004 13:21 GMT

Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmVhdQ==?=,

> The reference to Research was to the Research task pane in Word. Someone had
> suggested it could be used as a secondary data source.

None that I'm aware of :-)

> We need to be able to access the secondary data source from a server without
> users being able to save the data source in any way (i.e. as an Excel file)
> in the process. Do you think this is possible?

Not using mail merge, alone, no. As I said, Word *REQUIRES* its data be savedto
disk.

I'm not sure what you mean by "secondary data source"? But in any case, if you
have data to put into a Word document, and that data can only be held in
memory, then you require a scripting solution to automate Word.

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 :-)

Reply to this Message

Beau - 15 Nov 2004 23:45 GMT

Thanks for your help, Cindy. It is I as thought - I can now confirm this to
my boss.

> Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmVhdQ==?=,
>
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
> in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

Reply to this Message