Jo wrote:
mm I get an error message & it doesn't manage to open the data source . . .
but I tried the "Converter" option & so far so good, so thanks

I just helped my wife with a similar problem - occasionally the fields
would be truncated at 255 characters. You could see which fields would
have the problem if you select Format Cell (Control-1) and when the
type is 'General', the Sample field would be '#####'. It appeared to
be completely random. In the past, ensuring that the Cells were
formatted as General and not text was sufficent, but not this time.

Our solution was to have the very first data record in Excel (so after
the header) be a bunch of giberish; some long text that is 255
characters, and then Fill/Right across all the columns.

Then do the Merge and simply ignore this first letter/document/whatever
- consider it a mail merge tax!

My theory is that the Word determines the type of field (and therefore
the memory to allocate) when reading the first record, so if that is
255 characters, then any subsequent row can be as well, but otherwise
everything is truncated at 255. I didn't do any further testing to
confirm this, as it seems to be working for us.

Apparently Office 12 resolves the 255 limit, but I can't wait. 8

James