Unfortunately, there is a cluster of unhelpful problems in this area - i.e.,
solving one usually means that you face another.
To recap...
1. Using the Find in Field function from (e.g.) the Mailmerge toolbar
fails, certainly with this type of data source and connection type (DDE).
2. Using the Find button from within the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box
seems to work OK here, but
a. it can take a long time to populate the dialog box
b. the dialog box only holds 10,000 records, and Word can crash if you
have more (in fact,Word's processing clearly changes at the 10,000 record
mark in other places that do not have anything to do with this dialog box
3. You can solve (1) and 2(a) by using OLE DB to connect. However,
a. the dialog box still only holds 10,000 records and the Find button in
the box will not find a record beyond that
b. there are potentially several reasons why an OLE DB connection will
not work for you
4. You can work around 3(a) by using the Find button on the MailMerge
toolbar rather than the Find button in the Mail Merge Recipients Dialog box.
You may also notice that the dialog itself is different - with DDE, you have
to select a field to search.
5. The question is, can you work around all the problems alluded to in 3(b),
which include:
a. can you connect to a workgroup-secured database via OLE DB? If so, can
you do so in a way that does not significantly undermine workgroup security
(e.g. by embedding plain text login/password info in the Word document or
..odc file)?
b. can OLE DB "see" the tables/queries you want to use - e.g. are they
linked tables or parameter queries? And if they are parameter queries, how
do you get Word to ask for the paramters?
c. does OLE DB return the records you expect (e.g. it probably won't if you
are using wildcard characters in LIKE expressions in queries.
d. perhaps other stuff that I have forgotten.
6. So can you tell us which of those problems you would need to overcome or
any other reasons why you couldn't move to OLE DB?
--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk
"KMikaela" wrote in message
...
I also have the issue of word closing, and have recently upgraded from
Windows 2000 to Windows XP and from Office 2000 to Office 2003. In
templates
that functioned well before, the "find" command no longer locates the
record
and when I try to save the sort order on the Access data, it causes word
to
close. The database table has over 19,000 records with 78 field names, so
I'm not sure if this poses a problem for word 2003, as it worked well in
2000. I am using a secure database with a DDE connection so I'm not sure
if
that is the issue either. I have also installed the mso.dll fix, but
still
having the same issue. We use over 20 templates with mail merge to this
table and users are having to scroll through endless records any assitance
would be greatly appreciated.