I am trying to do a Mail Merge in WOrd 2003 from Excel file. Some of the fields are over 255 characters. I have read online that you can have fields larger than 255 charaters if you click tools> options> general and ensure that the "confirm conversion box" is checked.
I have tried to do this
When i click Open data source and browse to the file that I want to merge from I get a window that says Confirm Data Source and it has two options. The First option is OLE DB Database Files, If i click this option the merged document only has 255 characters.
If i click the second option, "Excel Files via ODBC", then i get the error message that "Word was unable to open the data source"


any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated, By the way, I am using word 2007.

Hi allenglishboy,

There should be more than two connection options, including DDE, which you should try.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

DDE was not an option.


here is the fix I had to end up doing. I read online that Word looks at the first 8 entries to see if they are over 255 characters, if they are not then it truncates anything over 255 characters SO i added an arbitrary bit of text to the first field So that it was over 255 characters. Then word let all the field be over 255 characters.

I'm glad you found a workaround. However, the lack of DDE suggests something might be awry with your Office installation. I'd suggest repairing Office via Help|Detect & Repair in any Office application.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Cross-posted at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...7-9efae34392e3
For cross-posting etiquette, please read: http://www.excelguru.ca/node/7

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

i was looking all over for this problem.
Thanks!

I am facing the same problem, but I dont understand which field you are talking about, in excel or word?

can you also give an example?

The reference is to every column in the Excel data source. Word evaluates them in an effort to try to establish what kind of data each column contains.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thank you for your reply, but can you give me an example please

I can't see why you need an example. Fill a column in excel with a heading and any mix of data types you care to think of. That's what Word queries. Having someone else put together some random data that are totally unrealted to your situation would be meaningless.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]