[JKarchner]

I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a memo field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?". It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it is just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone help with
this?

[Peter Jamieson]

Which version of Word/Access?

Peter Jamieson
"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is
because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a memo
field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?". It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it is
just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone help
with
this?

[JKarchner]

Sorry for the timely response, both are 2003.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Which version of Word/Access?

Peter Jamieson
"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is
because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a memo
field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?". It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it is
just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone help
with
this?

[Peter Jamieson]

Do you know what connection method Word is using to get the data?

If not, with your Mail merge Main document open, can you please try to start
the VBA Editor (Tools|Macro|Visual Basic Editor), look for the Immediate
window - typically at the bottom right, but if it isn't there, press
ctrl-G. Then type the following, or copy/paste it from this message, into
the Immediate window and press return to execute it

print activedocument.MailMerge.DataSource.ConnectString

then copy the result into a message in this thread.

Alternatively, if you don't have access to VBA or don't really want to go
there, can you save your document as a "Web Page" (not filtered) and close
it. Then located the .htm, and either
a. open it in Notepad or
b. check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open", open the
HTML file, but choose the plain text option so you can see the HTML codes.

Then look down the file until you see

w:MailMergeConnectString

(It shouldn't be far from the top - perhaps 25-30 lines)

Does the text immediately after w:MailMergeConnectString say "DSN",
"Provider" or perhaps "Table" or "Query"?

The only circumstances I can get anything similar to what you see on my
system (with a fairly small table but some quite big memo fields) is if I
open the data source using DDE or ODBC, and it contains non-ANSI Unicode
characters. However, by default, Word uses OLE DB to connect to Access and
that particular problem would only occur if you had Unicode characters that
were not available in the relevant font. And in either case, it sounds much
more random than that. But
a. does the problem start at the same point in the field each time?
b. can you estimate how many characters are OK before the "???"
c. do your memo fields contain lots of paragraphs?

Peter Jamieson


"JKarchner" wrote in message
news
Sorry for the timely response, both are 2003.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Which version of Word/Access?

Peter Jamieson
"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is
because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a memo
field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?". It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it is
just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone help
with
this?

[JKarchner]

I believe this is what you had asked for: w:MailMergeConnectStringQUERY
qryARMSSupplierProfiles/w:MailMergeConnectString
I know that I use the DDE method, because i had read on this community that
using DDE was the only way to use queries. So it does say QUERY immediately
following that.
For the rest of your questions:
a. yes it does start at the same point in the document
b. 255 characters are ok
c. i dont know how much experience you have with Access, but i will try to
explain this is simply as i can. Basically, i concatenate memo fields
together for this report, and for each item that is concatenated a new
paragraph is created. So technically there are some that have 3 - 6
paragraphs, i do not know if that qualifies as a lot.

Anyways, this only happens twice in my document. So i have no problem
fixiing it by hand, but now i am curious as to how and why this happens and
also how to go about fixing it. Thank you again for all your help and i will
be waiting for your response.
"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Do you know what connection method Word is using to get the data?

If not, with your Mail merge Main document open, can you please try to start
the VBA Editor (Tools|Macro|Visual Basic Editor), look for the Immediate
window - typically at the bottom right, but if it isn't there, press
ctrl-G. Then type the following, or copy/paste it from this message, into
the Immediate window and press return to execute it

print activedocument.MailMerge.DataSource.ConnectString

then copy the result into a message in this thread.

Alternatively, if you don't have access to VBA or don't really want to go
there, can you save your document as a "Web Page" (not filtered) and close
it. Then located the .htm, and either
a. open it in Notepad or
b. check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open", open the
HTML file, but choose the plain text option so you can see the HTML codes.

Then look down the file until you see

w:MailMergeConnectString

(It shouldn't be far from the top - perhaps 25-30 lines)

Does the text immediately after w:MailMergeConnectString say "DSN",
"Provider" or perhaps "Table" or "Query"?

The only circumstances I can get anything similar to what you see on my
system (with a fairly small table but some quite big memo fields) is if I
open the data source using DDE or ODBC, and it contains non-ANSI Unicode
characters. However, by default, Word uses OLE DB to connect to Access and
that particular problem would only occur if you had Unicode characters that
were not available in the relevant font. And in either case, it sounds much
more random than that. But
a. does the problem start at the same point in the field each time?
b. can you estimate how many characters are OK before the "???"
c. do your memo fields contain lots of paragraphs?

Peter Jamieson


"JKarchner" wrote in message
news
Sorry for the timely response, both are 2003.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Which version of Word/Access?

Peter Jamieson
"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is
because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a memo
field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?". It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it is
just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone help
with
this?

[Peter Jamieson]

c. i dont know how much experience you have with Access, but i will try to
explain this is simply as i can.

I appreciate that, thanks!

I know that I use the DDE method, because i had read on this community
that
using DDE was the only way to use queries.

OK, this is not the whole truth: you need DDE to execute certain types of
query, including
a. parameter queries
b. queries that call Access VBA functions
c. queries that use some of the financial series functions and a couple of
other odd functions
d. queries that use the Jet SQL wildcards * and ? in a database that has
not been converted to ANSI SQL syntax
e. a few other things (I don't claim to know them all).

That's rather a lot, obviously, and if you have one of those queries there's
no alternative to DDE. But if you can use OLEDB this problem may disappear.

DDe works OK on my data here until the memo field reaches 4096 characters,
then it doesn't see the record at all. This is on an Access 2000 format
database. other than that, I can't do any more research today but will have
a look again tomorrow.

Peter Jamieson


"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I believe this is what you had asked for: w:MailMergeConnectStringQUERY
qryARMSSupplierProfiles/w:MailMergeConnectString
I know that I use the DDE method, because i had read on this community
that
using DDE was the only way to use queries. So it does say QUERY
immediately
following that.
For the rest of your questions:
a. yes it does start at the same point in the document
b. 255 characters are ok
c. i dont know how much experience you have with Access, but i will try to
explain this is simply as i can. Basically, i concatenate memo fields
together for this report, and for each item that is concatenated a new
paragraph is created. So technically there are some that have 3 - 6
paragraphs, i do not know if that qualifies as a lot.

Anyways, this only happens twice in my document. So i have no problem
fixiing it by hand, but now i am curious as to how and why this happens
and
also how to go about fixing it. Thank you again for all your help and i
will
be waiting for your response.
"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Do you know what connection method Word is using to get the data?

If not, with your Mail merge Main document open, can you please try to
start
the VBA Editor (Tools|Macro|Visual Basic Editor), look for the Immediate
window - typically at the bottom right, but if it isn't there, press
ctrl-G. Then type the following, or copy/paste it from this message, into
the Immediate window and press return to execute it

print activedocument.MailMerge.DataSource.ConnectString

then copy the result into a message in this thread.

Alternatively, if you don't have access to VBA or don't really want to go
there, can you save your document as a "Web Page" (not filtered) and
close
it. Then located the .htm, and either
a. open it in Notepad or
b. check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at open", open
the
HTML file, but choose the plain text option so you can see the HTML
codes.

Then look down the file until you see

w:MailMergeConnectString

(It shouldn't be far from the top - perhaps 25-30 lines)

Does the text immediately after w:MailMergeConnectString say "DSN",
"Provider" or perhaps "Table" or "Query"?

The only circumstances I can get anything similar to what you see on my
system (with a fairly small table but some quite big memo fields) is if I
open the data source using DDE or ODBC, and it contains non-ANSI Unicode
characters. However, by default, Word uses OLE DB to connect to Access
and
that particular problem would only occur if you had Unicode characters
that
were not available in the relevant font. And in either case, it sounds
much
more random than that. But
a. does the problem start at the same point in the field each time?
b. can you estimate how many characters are OK before the "???"
c. do your memo fields contain lots of paragraphs?

Peter Jamieson


"JKarchner" wrote in message
news
Sorry for the timely response, both are 2003.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Which version of Word/Access?

Peter Jamieson
"JKarchner" wrote in message
...
I dont know what the cause of this is, but i would assume that it is
because
of a character limit. When i do a mail merge from Access from a
memo
field,
after so many characters the rest of the data is displayed in "?".
It
appears to be made of the same number of characters as the data, it
is
just
displayed with "?"s instead of the actually character. Can anyone
help
with
this?