[Steve]

This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Peter Jamieson]

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Steve]

It is an excel cvs extension on my hardrive

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Peter Jamieson]

Do you mean a .csv, which is a delimited text file that you can open in,
and save from, Excel?

If so, can you open it in (say) Notepad and verify that it really is a
plain text file delimited by commas?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
It is an excel cvs extension on my hardrive

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Steve]

It is, now what?
It's doing this even on old mail-merge files that use to work.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Do you mean a .csv, which is a delimited text file that you can open in,
and save from, Excel?

If so, can you open it in (say) Notepad and verify that it really is a
plain text file delimited by commas?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
It is an excel cvs extension on my hardrive

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Steve]

Yes, I do. now what?

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Do you mean a .csv, which is a delimited text file that you can open in,
and save from, Excel?

If so, can you open it in (say) Notepad and verify that it really is a
plain text file delimited by commas?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
It is an excel cvs extension on my hardrive

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help

[Peter Jamieson]

There are three main possibilities, e.g.
a. something has changed in Word/Windows that prevent Word from
opening your file
b. something has changed about the content or structure of your file
that prevents Word from opening it.
c. the Word Mail Merge Main document has been corrupted in some way
and that is the cuse of the problem.

You can test (c) by creating a completely new mail merge main document
and trying to connect to the same data source.

Otherwise, I would start by guessing that it is (b) and try to test that
theory. For example, if you save the current version of your file, then
perhaps if you have a backup of an earlier version saved somewhere you
could try using that as the data source. Or if you don't have an old
version, you could consider constructing a test version with only a few
rows and see if that works OK. If it does, then (b) looks pretty likely
and it becomes a question of working out what has changed. If older test
data doesn't work either, then (a) looks more likely.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
Yes, I do. now what?

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Do you mean a .csv, which is a delimited text file that you can open in,
and save from, Excel?

If so, can you open it in (say) Notepad and verify that it really is a
plain text file delimited by commas?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
It is an excel cvs extension on my hardrive

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What is the data source? Where is it?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

STEVE wrote:
This just started, and it was just successful in opening data.
Word 97.
Please help