I already posted this problem but there have been some new developments and I
can't find my origional post. Sorry for the trouble.

Word 2002 10.6612.6714 SP3 / Excel 2002 10.6501.6714 SP3 / WinXP Pro SP2

I am cataloguing DVDs and DVD packs for my company. Each individual item
needs to be put into its own Word file, no problem. Each movie must have its
TITLE, DIRECTOR, DATE, COPYRIGHT, SYNOPSIS, ETC... included with each entry.
Some entry's will have only one movie some will be multi-movie packs (One
file, 10 movies, each with title, date, copyright...).

The problem is with the SYNOPSIS field. Some synopsis are very long, and
for the first four movies, the merge is fine, taking the entire synopsis from
the Excel file no matter how many characters there are. But on the 5th movie
on up, it restricts the field to 255 characters, no matter what. We've been
all over the MS website and multiple other spport sites and, though we have
seen this 255 character restriction mentioned, there seems to be no way
around it. In addition, there seems to be no explination on why, on the
first 4 synopsis fields, there seems to be no character limit. Just for
clarification I'll paste an example of what I mean below:

************************************************** ***
Disc 1 €“ Side A: Title: One Eyed Jacks
Director: Marlon Brando Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden
Copyright: 2003 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 1959 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild
Violence) Runtime: 141 minutes
Synopsis: Early in 1959 Marlon Brando began one of his most unique projects
of his career - directing himself in One-Eyed Jacks. Taken from Charles
Neider's novel, One-Eyed Jacks is a tale of revenge set in Mexico. Stanley
Kubrik was originally signed to direct, but he and Brando failed to agree on
much of anything and he was dismissed four weeks prior to filming. Marlon
decided to direct the movie himself. The movie went well over budget. On
completion, Brando the director had set a new world record by exposing over
one million feet of film stock. --- It's the Old West of 1880, and Brando
stars as Kid Rio who along with his partner, Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) are
bank robbers who are caught holding up a Mexican bank. Longworth gets away
and allows his partner to get caught and go to jail. When Rio is released
five years later, he goes out to seek revenge, however he is surprised to
find his partner is married with a stepdaughter and a sheriff of a town.
Complications set in when Rio himself falls in love with the stepdaughter.

Disc 1 €“ Side B: Title: Sundowners
Director: 0 Cast: Robert Preston, Robert Sterling, John Barrymore, Jr.
Copyright: 2001 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: Color Rating: NR (Family)
Runtime: 83 minutes
Synopsis: When two brothers find their ranch empire threatened, they hire a
notorious gunslinger to protect their land€¦but whose side is he really on?
Western action with Robert Preston, Robert Sterling and John Barrymore, Jr.

Disc 2 €“ Side A: Title: Big Trees, The
Director: Felix Feist Cast: Kirk Douglas, Eve Miller, Edgar Buchanan
Copyright: 2003 BCI Year: 1952 Col/BW: Color Rating: NR (Mild Violence)
Runtime: 89 minutes
Synopsis: A Showcase picture for the talents of Kirk Douglas with the
majestic giant California redwood trees as a fitting backdrop for his bravura
performance. Douglas is Jim Fallon, a larger than life logging entrepreneur
who will stop at nothing to make his schemes succeed. He meets his match
with the beautiful and pious Alicia Chadwick (Eve Miller) who is the driving
force behind the Quaker sect who own and revere the very redwoods he wants to
timber. When a logging syndicate, more ruthless than Fallons, takes over
his failing enterprise, he is surprised to find Alicia Chadwick on his side,
willing to forego her non-violent teachings to help Fallon take what is
rightfully hers.

Disc 2 €“ Side B: Title: Vengeance Valley
Director: 0 Cast: Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker
Copyright: 2003 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild
Violence) Runtime: 83 minutes
Synopsis: For his entire life, Owen has been covering up for his
good-for-nothing brother Lee, protecting the rascal from their father's
wrath. Finally, however, Lee's shenanigans to too far. After getting a
young woman pregnant, Lee shifts the blame to Owen. Lee even encourages the
girl's brothers to get revenge, hoping that with Owen out of the picture
he'll become the sole heir to their fathers farm. That's as much as any man
can take... and Owen decides that it's time to settle the score. Burt
Lancaster stars with Robert Walker in this melodramatic tale of the western
range.

Disc 3 €“ Side A: Title: Boot Hill
Director: 0 Cast: Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, Woody Stride, Victor Buono
Copyright: 2002 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild Violence)
Runtime: 92 minutes
Synopsis: The stars of the "Trinity" spaghetti westerns, blue-eyed
roustabout Terence Hill and his tough-as-nails sidekick Bud Spencer, teamed
up for the first time here, as a pair of amiable saddle tramps riding across
the plains and encountering gunfighters (who
************************************************

Every title after the 4th one ends up with that 255 character limit. Best
guesses?

Recalling from other posts on this subject, I believe the limit is carryover
from the days when there was a 255 character limit on an entry in an Excel
field. If your data source is Excel and that is where you are storing the
synopses, then I guess as far as Excel is concerned the limit no longer
applies to Excel itself. It's a bit mistifying as to why the mailmerge
operation is behaving inconsistently, but here are a couple of things that
may help:

1. If you are merging directly to a printer, in ToolsOptionsPrint, turn
off the background printing. There maybe some sort of overflow occuring as
a result of subsequent records being merged before the preceding one has
been printed. (This may not be of any use however as I assume that the
example that you provided was produced by merging to a new document, so this
printing issue would be of no relevance.)

2. Try the different connection methods to the data source that will be
available when you turn on the "Confirm conversions at open" item under
ToolsOptionsGeneral

3. As a work around, store the synopses in separate Word files and in the
data source, include the drive:\\path\\filename for each synopsis and in the
mailmerge main document, use an { INCLUDETEXT { MERGEFIELD
"Synopsisfile" } } field

--
Please respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
interested. Questions sent directly to me will only be answered on a paid
consulting basis.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Gibson" wrote in message
...
I already posted this problem but there have been some new developments and
I
can't find my origional post. Sorry for the trouble.

Word 2002 10.6612.6714 SP3 / Excel 2002 10.6501.6714 SP3 / WinXP Pro SP2

I am cataloguing DVDs and DVD packs for my company. Each individual item
needs to be put into its own Word file, no problem. Each movie must have
its
TITLE, DIRECTOR, DATE, COPYRIGHT, SYNOPSIS, ETC... included with each
entry.
Some entry's will have only one movie some will be multi-movie packs (One
file, 10 movies, each with title, date, copyright...).

The problem is with the SYNOPSIS field. Some synopsis are very long, and
for the first four movies, the merge is fine, taking the entire synopsis
from
the Excel file no matter how many characters there are. But on the 5th
movie
on up, it restricts the field to 255 characters, no matter what. We've
been
all over the MS website and multiple other spport sites and, though we
have
seen this 255 character restriction mentioned, there seems to be no way
around it. In addition, there seems to be no explination on why, on the
first 4 synopsis fields, there seems to be no character limit. Just for
clarification I'll paste an example of what I mean below:

************************************************** ***
Disc 1 - Side A: Title: One Eyed Jacks
Director: Marlon Brando Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden
Copyright: 2003 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 1959 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild
Violence) Runtime: 141 minutes
Synopsis: Early in 1959 Marlon Brando began one of his most unique
projects
of his career - directing himself in One-Eyed Jacks. Taken from Charles
Neider's novel, One-Eyed Jacks is a tale of revenge set in Mexico.
Stanley
Kubrik was originally signed to direct, but he and Brando failed to agree
on
much of anything and he was dismissed four weeks prior to filming. Marlon
decided to direct the movie himself. The movie went well over budget. On
completion, Brando the director had set a new world record by exposing
over
one million feet of film stock. --- It's the Old West of 1880, and Brando
stars as Kid Rio who along with his partner, Dad Longworth (Karl Malden)
are
bank robbers who are caught holding up a Mexican bank. Longworth gets
away
and allows his partner to get caught and go to jail. When Rio is released
five years later, he goes out to seek revenge, however he is surprised to
find his partner is married with a stepdaughter and a sheriff of a town.
Complications set in when Rio himself falls in love with the stepdaughter.

Disc 1 - Side B: Title: Sundowners
Director: 0 Cast: Robert Preston, Robert Sterling, John Barrymore, Jr.
Copyright: 2001 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: Color Rating: NR
(Family)
Runtime: 83 minutes
Synopsis: When two brothers find their ranch empire threatened, they hire
a
notorious gunslinger to protect their land.but whose side is he really on?
Western action with Robert Preston, Robert Sterling and John Barrymore,
Jr.

Disc 2 - Side A: Title: Big Trees, The
Director: Felix Feist Cast: Kirk Douglas, Eve Miller, Edgar Buchanan
Copyright: 2003 BCI Year: 1952 Col/BW: Color Rating: NR (Mild Violence)
Runtime: 89 minutes
Synopsis: A Showcase picture for the talents of Kirk Douglas with the
majestic giant California redwood trees as a fitting backdrop for his
bravura
performance. Douglas is Jim Fallon, a larger than life logging
entrepreneur
who will stop at nothing to make his schemes succeed. He meets his match
with the beautiful and pious Alicia Chadwick (Eve Miller) who is the
driving
force behind the Quaker sect who own and revere the very redwoods he wants
to
timber. When a logging syndicate, more ruthless than Fallon's, takes over
his failing enterprise, he is surprised to find Alicia Chadwick on his
side,
willing to forego her non-violent teachings to help Fallon take what is
rightfully hers.

Disc 2 - Side B: Title: Vengeance Valley
Director: 0 Cast: Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker
Copyright: 2003 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild
Violence) Runtime: 83 minutes
Synopsis: For his entire life, Owen has been covering up for his
good-for-nothing brother Lee, protecting the rascal from their father's
wrath. Finally, however, Lee's shenanigans to too far. After getting a
young woman pregnant, Lee shifts the blame to Owen. Lee even encourages
the
girl's brothers to get revenge, hoping that with Owen out of the picture
he'll become the sole heir to their fathers farm. That's as much as any
man
can take... and Owen decides that it's time to settle the score. Burt
Lancaster stars with Robert Walker in this melodramatic tale of the
western
range.

Disc 3 - Side A: Title: Boot Hill
Director: 0 Cast: Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, Woody Stride, Victor Buono
Copyright: 2002 BCI Eclipse LLC Year: 0 Col/BW: 0 Rating: NR (Mild
Violence)
Runtime: 92 minutes
Synopsis: The stars of the "Trinity" spaghetti westerns, blue-eyed
roustabout Terence Hill and his tough-as-nails sidekick Bud Spencer,
teamed
up for the first time here, as a pair of amiable saddle tramps riding
across
the plains and encountering gunfighters (who
************************************************

Every title after the 4th one ends up with that 255 character limit. Best
guesses?