Automated Letter

[HiTechCoach]

not been so whizz bang for me, i'm afraid. i'm trying to set up my first ever mail merge and it's not going great... as a start, i can't get word to recognise any of my queries within my database. attached is the process i'm undergoing. can anyone see where i'm going wrong?

i can't seem to find any solutions online - everyone just assumes you can select queries from the 'select recipient list' (or wizard). i found one site where they advised a checkbox in the advanced options, which i did (first pic int he attached PDF), but this only added an "OLE DB database file" source dialog box in between all the others without adding the queries to the selectable list at the end....

You really should avoid letting Word attached to you database.

If you must, then I would highly recommend that you use a separate back end with tables just to hold the merge source. I would run an append query to add the data to the table in the merge back end. I owudl avoid trying to merge to a query.


I would recommnd that you check out te Super Easy Mail Merger found HERE


From HERE

Don't let word attached to you running mdb file.

Again, this is just common sense. A large portion of word merge examples actually let word OPEN your mdb file. This is a formula for disaster. Allowing word to open the mdb file means that you have to deal with some known bugs (like word launching a second copy of ms-access for example). Further, if you implement security in ms-access, now word has to deal with passwords and permissions (again, a huge can of worms). Worse is if you have the runtime of ms-access installed, or multiple versions of ms-access, then word can again cause all kinds of problems as it tries to launch ms-access, and it might even launch the wrong version of ms-access. I could again rant on for pages here, but I think any developer can clearly see that if we prevent word from trying to attach to the ms-access mdb file, then we avoid a TON OF POSSIBLE problems. Again, since we CAN control this, then lets do so. As a result, my sample merge code DOES NOT let word attached to the mdb file. As a result, it is rock solid. As a result, it just works!

Of course what I do is create a temp txt file with the one record merged as a text csv file. Note that I used to use a file name of merge.txt. However, it turns out that a bug exists in the word97 merge on pc's with file extensions HIDDEN. The problem is especially noticeable on win xp machines, since hidden extensions is a common default for many users pc's. So, the solution here is to either turn on extensions, but that is hard to do. It is way too much to ask users to re-configure their pc's to show file extensions. However, by using a file name with a non registered file extension, this known word merge bug can be avoided! Thus, I now use a file name of merge.888, and this avoids this bug. If you need to use those merge files in Excel, you can either change my code, as the file name used is a constant. You can also just re-name the temp file also.

 

[wiklendt]

You really should avoid letting Word attached to you database.

If you must, then I would highly recommend that you use a separate back end with tables just to hold the merge source. I would run an append query to add the data to the table in the merge back end. I owudl avoid trying to merge to a query.


I would recommnd that you check out te Super Easy Mail Merger found HERE


From HERE

from what little i know about access and word, this does makes sense. i just wish the 'easy' way was preferred.... :-/

thanks HTC. i'll look into implementing this. the possibility that i might want to merge just one record with this database is quite high - don't want any issues, especially if this ever becomes a faculty database.

just for curiosity's sake - the VBA i've seen lots of people using for automated mail merge with word from access, is that something that 'connects' word and access in the way that this above-mentioned developer abhors?

 

[HiTechCoach]

from what little i know about access and word, this does makes sense. i just wish the 'easy' way was preferred.... :-/

thanks HTC. i'll look into implementing this. the possibility that i might want to merge just one record with this database is quite high - don't want any issues, especially if this ever becomes a faculty database.

The Super Easy merge makes that very easy.

just for curiosity's sake - the VBA i've seen lots of people using for automated mail merge with word from access, is that something that 'connects' word and access in the way that this above-mentioned developer abhors?

I agree with him totally.

After lots of issues like database corruptions, locked databases, etc., I learned the same lessons.

About the example you see that have Word merge directly with an Access databses...

They are making a very simple example for a single user database (not split or shared). It is very misleading when this is not pointed out.

If you have a single user database and you have Access closed before you start the Word mail merge then you have a lot higher chance of it working without any issues.

In a multi-user set up, you will have lots of issues if you merge using the database as a merge source.

Before I started creating a Word merge document I had already figured out that you needed to export the data to a separate database that only ONE user will access at a time to do the merge.