[Peter Jamieson]

If you save it from Notepad in UTF-8 format, does that make any difference
to what happens when you just try to open the file in Word?

Peter Jamieson
"Christoph Arnold" wrote in message
...
ANSI

"Peter Jamieson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
One other thought: if you try to save the file from Notepad, what
encoding does Notepad think it has - (ANSI? Unicode? etc.)

Peter Jamieson

"Christoph Arnold" wrote in message
...
Can be opened without problems in: Notepad, Wordpad, Word 2000!
The described problems are only when opening the file in Word 2003 and
2007. (I've tested only with these 5 Programs. The problem can always be
reproduced with this textfile, it's not only sometimes, it's always when
opening with Word 2003/2007)

Christoph Arnold

"Doug Robbins - Word MVP" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
Can you open the file in Notepad? If not, it may be corrupt in some
way.

--
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

"Christoph Arnold" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the info. Word 2003/2007 seems to do/search something when
opening files that look like datasources (after the text converter).
When opening just the file (with or without the confirm conversion
dialog), the file is always displayed but then after a second word
hangs/cursor stands still/no response.

Christoph Arnold

"Peter Jamieson" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
Rading your message again, I think the problem is that the data
source is attached to your .dot file.

The problem is that in Word 2002/2003, Word seems to try to open the
file twice - once when it opens the .dot with the data source
connected, and once when it opens the .doc that is created from the
.dot. However, when it tries to open the file attached to the .doc,
it is already open exclusively and Word cannot open it again. This
was not the behaviour in Word 2000.

You should be able to test that by disconnecting the data source from
the .dot and only connecting it in the .doc. Unfortunately what that
usually means is that you have to write an AutoNew macro (or
something like that) to open the data source whenever a new .doc is
created from the .dot.

The thing about the 255 field limit is that it does depend on the
data source, but it also depends on the way that Word tries to
connect to the data source. In the case of text (csv) type files,
Word has three mechanisms:
a. its internal text converter
b. ODBC
c. OLEDB (the default in Word 2002/2003)

As far as I know, (b) and (c) will limit you to at most 255 fields.
(a) allows more columns, but since there is no specification of the
maximum we are basically at the mercy of what Microsoft decides to do
in future. Further, when you open a text file as a data source, you
may have to force Word to use (a) (again, checking
Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open" is the only way to
do this in the User Interface.

One thing that has certainly changed over the years is the text
converter tries to check the character encoding of the file. If it is
"not sure", it may pop up an additional dialog box. As far as I know,
Word uses a set of heuristics to do this (because nothing in the file
explicitly defines the character set being used, and I have certainly
heard reports that large numbers of fields or large field contents
can trigger display of this dialog box. All you can really do is see
what happens on your system(s) and deal with the problem if it
occurs.

Peter Jamieson


"Christoph Arnold" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your quick response!

- I tried with confirm conversion - word opens it as a normal
textfile.
- Disabling the virus checker didn't change the behaviour.
- When we reported it to MS (two weeks ago), we were told that we
can't have more than 256 fields as a datasource for mailmerge, but
this week we saw (on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294688/de) that
it should be possible to use more fields (we reported this - and the
fact that opening just the file fails - again, but still waiting for
a response...)

Christoph Arnold

"Peter Jamieson" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
I would try the following:
a. check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open"
and try opening the file again. Please note what format Word thinks
it is trying to open
b. if you have a virus checker enabled and are in a position to
disable it temporarily, try doing that then opening the file.

If necessary report the problem to Microsoft through their support
incident mechanism (on their website) if you cannot get it to work
(other people here may offer suggestions, but we are just
volunteers).

Peter Jamieson
"Christoph Arnold" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to use a textfile (with 508 fields) as a datasource for
mailmerge.

In Word 2000 this file works, but the same file used in Word
2003/2007 doesn't work (the dot, that uses this file as a
datasource is loaded and shown in word, then word hangs / cursor
stands still / no reaction on keyboard/mouse )

The same happens, when I open just the textfile with word! No
problem with Word 2000, Wordpad, Notepad... but hangs when opened
with Word 2003/2007.

Thanks for any help!

Christoph Arnold