Change Location of Open Data Sources

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Mary - 28 Feb 2006 22:24 GMT

I have an application that runs a Word Mail Merge on a Citrix machine.
The client is presented in Word Mail Merge but the client can not click
on the Open Data Sources button on the Mail Merge toolbar because the
Citrix machine is locked down and Word is running on the Citrix machin.
I want to have the My Data Sources moved to another machine, with a
drive letter mapping, so when they click on Open Data Sources they are
in some folder on say the R:\ drive.

Can you change the location of the My Data Sources, or more importantly
the location of the Open Data Sources button?

Thanks

Brenda

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 01 Mar 2006 10:40 GMT

Hi Mary,

> I have an application that runs a Word Mail Merge on a Citrix machine.
> The client is presented in Word Mail Merge but the client can not click
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> Can you change the location of the My Data Sources, or more importantly
> the location of the Open Data Sources button?

I'm not really familiar with Citrix or Terminal Server, beyond the very
surface (=end-user) But as far as I know, the answer to the first is no.
If I recall correctly, it can't even be done with a system policy.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the second question. I don't recall
ever seeing this toolbar button locked down, but it may indeed be because
the folder isn't available. If that's the case, the literal answer to
your question is no.

POSSIBLY, you can "roll your own" functionality for letting users link up
to data sources. A lot will depend on how wide a range of possible data
sources they're to be allowed to use. The process of connecting to a data
source is potentially very complicated.

Have you actually discussed this with Microsoft? They do overlook things
when developing apps, and Mail Merge is definitely a "step child", but I
would hope they wouldn't have forgotten this very basic requirement?

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 :-)

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Brenda - 01 Mar 2006 12:45 GMT

> > Can you change the location of the My Data Sources, or more importantly
> > the location of the Open Data Sources button?

What I meant to say it "Can I change the folder that is opened by the Open
Data Sources button?" I notice that when you do not have an Open Data Sources
button, it opens other folders such as the last folder opened or My
Documents. Can I control what folder is opened by the Open Data Sources
button? I already set the goWordApp.ChangeFileOpenDirectory (word_directory)
to the path where they need to save any changes to the Mail Merge documents.
This would not be the location where I would want the data source to reside.

My clients always have the exact same data source type and name -
rt_lettr.dbf. The path would also be the same - something like
R:\RT2006\%username%\Data Sources\rt_lettr.dbf.

The Open Data Sources button itself is not locked down. But when the Data
Sources dialog window is opened a message with "Restrictions on this machine"
will not let you do anything.

Brenda

> Hi Mary,
>
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
> 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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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 01 Mar 2006 19:47 GMT

Whoever is imposing the restrictions needs to consider that they are
preventing people from doing the work for which they are employed.

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

>> > Can you change the location of the My Data Sources, or more importantly
>> > the location of the Open Data Sources button?
[quoted text clipped - 60 lines]
>> 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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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 07 Mar 2006 19:59 GMT

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

> My clients always have the exact same data source type and name -
> rt_lettr.dbf. The path would also be the same - something like
> R:\RT2006\%username%\Data Sources\rt_lettr.dbf.

In that case, roll your own. Create a macro that always connects
this data source, in this path, to the currently active document.
Assign it to a toolbar button, and remove the one built into Word.
Make sure you save these changes in an appropriate context. This
could be a template from which the user would create all mail merge
documents that link to this data source. It could be a global
template the user would load when needing to mail merge with such a
data source.

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 :-)

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