Truncated fields in Excel-Word merge

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Jo - 07 Dec 2005 13:56 GMT

Hi,

In my Excel source some of the cells have a lot of text in them (up to 3000
words). When I merge it into a Word document, most of this text disappears.
Is there a way around this, or is it an inherent limitation?

Thank you!

xJo

Reply to this Message

Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 08 Dec 2005 05:00 GMT

In Word, select Options from the Tools menu and then on the General tab,
check the box against "Confirm conversions at open". After doing that, when
you attach the datasource to the mail merge main document, you will be
presented with a dialog box in which you can select the method by which the
connection is made. Try the DDE option.

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

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> xJo

Reply to this Message

Jo - 30 Dec 2005 13:56 GMT

mm I get an error message & it doesn't manage to open the data source . . .
but I tried the "Converter" option & so far so good, so thanks :)

Reply to this Message

wacko8224@gmail.com - 31 Dec 2005 04:52 GMT

> mm I get an error message & it doesn't manage to open the data source . . .
> but I tried the "Converter" option & so far so good, so thanks :)

I just helped my wife with a similar problem - occasionally the fields
would be truncated at 255 characters. You could see which fields would
have the problem if you select Format Cell (Control-1) and when the
type is 'General', the Sample field would be '#####'. It appeared to
be completely random. In the past, ensuring that the Cells were
formatted as General and not text was sufficent, but not this time.

Our solution was to have the very first data record in Excel (so after
the header) be a bunch of giberish; some long text that is > 255
characters, and then Fill/Right across all the columns.

Then do the Merge and simply ignore this first letter/document/whatever
- consider it a mail merge tax!

My theory is that the Word determines the type of field (and therefore
the memory to allocate) when reading the first record, so if that is >
255 characters, then any subsequent row can be as well, but otherwise
everything is truncated at 255. I didn't do any further testing to
confirm this, as it seems to be working for us.

Apparently Office 12 resolves the 255 limit, but I can't wait. 8:)

James

Reply to this Message

Rate this thread: