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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / August 2006Why is my merge data being truncated?
I am merging job vacancy information into a Word document. One of my fields is a Description field that runs to a few paragraphs in the Excel spreadsheet. When I merge it into Word, it's cutting off everything after the 255th character. Is this a fixed maximum for the MergeField code? Is there a way around this so I can merge into a field of more than 255 characters? It's a carryover from the days when 255 characters was the maximum that you could insert in an Excel cell. Try one of the other methods of connecting to the datasource that will become available to you if you select Options from the Tools menu and go to the General tab and check the "Confirm conversions at open box" The other work around would be to copy and paste the information into individual Word documents and in the mailmerge data source, include the path and filename of each with \\ as the path separator and then use an {INCLUDETEXT {MAILMERGE Docname}} field in the mailmerge main document.  SignaturePlease respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be interested. Questions sent directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis. Hope this helps, Doug Robbins - Word MVP >I am merging job vacancy information into a Word document. One of my fields > is a Description field that runs to a few paragraphs in the Excel [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > a > way around this so I can merge into a field of more than 255 characters? > Try one of the other methods of connecting > to the datasource that will become available to you if you select Options > from the Tools menu and go to the General tab and check the "Confirm > conversions at open box" This worked a treat. Turns out that, without the "Confirm conversions" option enabled, Word defaults to the OLE DB Database option, which truncates cells at 255 characters. It wasn't happy with the DDE option at all, and the ODBC option mimicked the OLE option, but the Converter works just fine, as long as you don't mind having to confirm the Conversion every time you open the document for merging (unlike the ODBC and OLE merges). It's worth the small hassle for the ability to marge larger cells, though. > The other work around would be to copy and paste the information into > individual Word documents and in the mailmerge data source, include the path > and filename of each with \\ as the path separator and then use an > {INCLUDETEXT {MAILMERGE Docname}} field in the mailmerge main document. This would work if we were talking about 1 or 2 cells, but when the list runs into the 100s, it's just a little insane. > Hope this helps, > Doug Robbins - Word MVP It certainly did. Thank you. Thanks, I had the same problem! why is this limitation of 255? It is exactly 2 byte...but why? >-----Original Message----- > [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >It certainly did. Thank you. >. It's a carryover from the days when that was the maximum length of the contents of an Excel cell. SignaturePlease post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis. Hope this helps > Thanks, I had the same problem! > [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] > >It certainly did. Thank you. > >. Ok, It turned out that Mail merge has its limits. With the converter method at seems that all text was merged from out the excel database. But at a closer look, the problem still appeared to a few merge fields. So in 80 percent the mail merge field contains all the data (for example 600 characters) and in 20 percent the 255 characters appeared instead of the full data. I have called Microsoft and they did know about this thread, but didn't came up with a solution. Could anyone help me with this problem? >-----Original Message----- >Thanks, I had the same problem! [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] >> >. I am having similar problems, but sometimes the text is truncated and sometimes it's not. It is not consistent. Most fields will bring over more than 255 characters and others no more than. If anyone else has figured out how to correct this, I'd like to know. I have NEVER had this problem before. What converter did you use to convert the Xcel data to bring in more than 255 data? > > Try one of the other methods of connecting > > to the datasource that will become available to you if you select Options [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > It certainly did. Thank you. I am having the same issue (excel to word) and am unsure how to make the converter work. Can anyone elaborate? > What converter did you use to convert the Xcel data to bring in more than 255 > data? [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > > > It certainly did. Thank you. The Excel converter is not provided as standard in recent versions of Word. It used to be part of a thing called the "Office Converter Pack" that you can download from the Microsoft website somewhere, but for some reason Microsoft no longer provides this particular converter. I think you can get it from Graham Mayor's site at http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm Peter Jamieson >I am having the same issue (excel to word) and am unsure how to make the > converter work. Can anyone elaborate? [quoted text clipped - 37 lines] >> > >> > It certainly did. Thank you. Hi =?Utf-8?B?RW1pbHk=?=, > I am having the same issue (excel to word) and am unsure how to make the > converter work. Can anyone elaborate? The "converter" would be a fourth option listed in the "methods" box: OLE DB, ODBC, DDE and the Spreadsheet converter. If you're not seeing this, then it isn't installed and it will be difficult to obtain it... Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005) 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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