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#1
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
Dear Word Gurus,
I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#2
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
DDE is unreliable which is presumably why Microsoft has changed it from the
default method of connection. I suspect that the problem is exacerbated by the never ending security updates, but which caused the problem you are experiencing I cannot say. If you change to the default method of connection then you will have to add the field formatting to your merge document - see http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JD2 wrote: Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#3
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
I have the same view as Graham.
A few possibilities (they may already be covered by the MS KB): a. you may have a corrupt Excel workbook, or one created in an earlier version of Excel. b. ensure your Excel data file is not marked read-only (seems extremely unlikely!) c. there may be corruption in WOrd, Word's normal.dot, or Word's registry keys I would suggest that you try creating a completely new test Excel file and seeing if you can use it as a mail merge data source using DDE. If you can, that suggests that your Excel file is corrupt. If so, I suggest you try exporting the contents to .csv format, importing the .csv file back into Excel, and saving the file under another name. Then see if you can connect to that. Obviously, if you have a lot of formulae etc. that will not be enough to restore your spreadsheet, but it's a start. Another possibility is that Word, or Word's Normal.dot template, has been corrupted. You can try following the relevant bits of the following article, even though it describes solutions to a different problem: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm I would consider filing a support incident with MS but they may well end up saying "it's not supported". Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#4
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
Thanks Graham,
I will give the alternative connection choice (and word fields) a go. Thank you for your quick response ... it is great to be able to use such a resource, especially when you have exhausted other options. I appreciate your time and effort. Regards JD2 "Graham Mayor" wrote: DDE is unreliable which is presumably why Microsoft has changed it from the default method of connection. I suspect that the problem is exacerbated by the never ending security updates, but which caused the problem you are experiencing I cannot say. If you change to the default method of connection then you will have to add the field formatting to your merge document - see http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org JD2 wrote: Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#5
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
Dear Peter,
Thank you too for your quick response. I will certainly experiment with your suggestions to see if I can detect where the problem lies. I'm hoping it's not the Excel database being corrupt as I'd rather not have to create all those views again ... but there are worse things in life! I appreciate your time and effort. Regards JD2 "Peter Jamieson" wrote: I have the same view as Graham. A few possibilities (they may already be covered by the MS KB): a. you may have a corrupt Excel workbook, or one created in an earlier version of Excel. b. ensure your Excel data file is not marked read-only (seems extremely unlikely!) c. there may be corruption in WOrd, Word's normal.dot, or Word's registry keys I would suggest that you try creating a completely new test Excel file and seeing if you can use it as a mail merge data source using DDE. If you can, that suggests that your Excel file is corrupt. If so, I suggest you try exporting the contents to .csv format, importing the .csv file back into Excel, and saving the file under another name. Then see if you can connect to that. Obviously, if you have a lot of formulae etc. that will not be enough to restore your spreadsheet, but it's a start. Another possibility is that Word, or Word's Normal.dot template, has been corrupted. You can try following the relevant bits of the following article, even though it describes solutions to a different problem: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm I would consider filing a support incident with MS but they may well end up saying "it's not supported". Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#6
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
How are you creating your views ?
Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Peter, Thank you too for your quick response. I will certainly experiment with your suggestions to see if I can detect where the problem lies. I'm hoping it's not the Excel database being corrupt as I'd rather not have to create all those views again ... but there are worse things in life! I appreciate your time and effort. Regards JD2 "Peter Jamieson" wrote: I have the same view as Graham. A few possibilities (they may already be covered by the MS KB): a. you may have a corrupt Excel workbook, or one created in an earlier version of Excel. b. ensure your Excel data file is not marked read-only (seems extremely unlikely!) c. there may be corruption in WOrd, Word's normal.dot, or Word's registry keys I would suggest that you try creating a completely new test Excel file and seeing if you can use it as a mail merge data source using DDE. If you can, that suggests that your Excel file is corrupt. If so, I suggest you try exporting the contents to .csv format, importing the .csv file back into Excel, and saving the file under another name. Then see if you can connect to that. Obviously, if you have a lot of formulae etc. that will not be enough to restore your spreadsheet, but it's a start. Another possibility is that Word, or Word's Normal.dot template, has been corrupted. You can try following the relevant bits of the following article, even though it describes solutions to a different problem: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm I would consider filing a support incident with MS but they may well end up saying "it's not supported". Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
#7
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Cannot reestablish DDE link
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your response. We were creating views using the View, Custom View command. As there are over 100 columns of data, we needed several views to filter both rows and columns for certain reports. All has worked out well though. Although we tested the normal.dot and Excel file as you suggested it didn't reveal any issues. We ended up fixing the problem by changing the connection method from DDE back to the default connection, and things are working fine now (even the currency and dates came over in the proper format!). So there was no need to recreate any views or export data. I appreciate your time and input anyway. Kind Regards JD2 "Peter Jamieson" wrote: How are you creating your views ? Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Peter, Thank you too for your quick response. I will certainly experiment with your suggestions to see if I can detect where the problem lies. I'm hoping it's not the Excel database being corrupt as I'd rather not have to create all those views again ... but there are worse things in life! I appreciate your time and effort. Regards JD2 "Peter Jamieson" wrote: I have the same view as Graham. A few possibilities (they may already be covered by the MS KB): a. you may have a corrupt Excel workbook, or one created in an earlier version of Excel. b. ensure your Excel data file is not marked read-only (seems extremely unlikely!) c. there may be corruption in WOrd, Word's normal.dot, or Word's registry keys I would suggest that you try creating a completely new test Excel file and seeing if you can use it as a mail merge data source using DDE. If you can, that suggests that your Excel file is corrupt. If so, I suggest you try exporting the contents to .csv format, importing the .csv file back into Excel, and saving the file under another name. Then see if you can connect to that. Obviously, if you have a lot of formulae etc. that will not be enough to restore your spreadsheet, but it's a start. Another possibility is that Word, or Word's Normal.dot template, has been corrupted. You can try following the relevant bits of the following article, even though it describes solutions to a different problem: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm I would consider filing a support incident with MS but they may well end up saying "it's not supported". Peter Jamieson "JD2" wrote in message ... Dear Word Gurus, I am assisting one of my staff members, who is trying to mail merge a 5-page letter with an Excel spreadsheet. We have set it to prompt for a connection, and chosen the DDE option. All was working fine for a while. However, now when she attempts to open the Word letter document, it says it cannot reestablish the DDE link. Although I am aware that we could choose a different conversion option (ie. ODBC), we'd rather not as we would lose formatting of some of the data during conversion. Does anyone have any suggestions why this error might be occurring and/or how to rectify it. I've tried most of the solutions provided in the MS KnowledgeBase articles (except for copying and pasting the data into a new file, as we have set up about 100 custom views and I presume we'd have to recreate them which I'm rather loathe to do) ... any suggestions please? Thank you in anticipation ... |
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