Can anyone help me?

We are getting errors when we try to do a mail merge in Word 2003 SP1
with an ASCII file generated in a custom database.

The only field that is giving the problem is the name field, which is
62 characters in length. If I open the text file and shorten the field
name to 39 or less by removing the spaces, everything works fine.

With the problematic list, I am able to select the list, and then when
I click "edit recipient list" I see all the populated fields except the
name field header which looks like this:
M____________________Name_________#%$
The "#%$" are actually displayed as chinese characters?.

If I click on this field to "sort by", I get the error "Word could not
parse your query options into a valid SQL string". All other fields
seem to work fine.

If I ignore this and contine, I eventually end up with an "invalid
merge field" error.

I find it hard to believe that Word 2003's merge fields are limited to
39 characters.

Has anyone experienced this?

Cheers,

Brad

Also, I am finding that putting the suspect field name in brackets -eg

(name)

seems to work as well, no matter how many characters I use. The problem
is that the user has to edit the ASCII text file manually, each time
after it is output from the database, as the database will not
accomodate this.

This seems to be a fix, but does not get to the root of the problem, as
they did not have this problem in Word 97.

Open to any solutions!!

If its the field name that looks like
M____________________Name_________#%$
where the "#%$" are displayed as chinese characters, it's something that you
are going to have to fix in the procedure that outputs the data from
whatever database it is.

--
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
wrote in message
ups.com...
Also, I am finding that putting the suspect field name in brackets -eg

(name)

seems to work as well, no matter how many characters I use. The problem
is that the user has to edit the ASCII text file manually, each time
after it is output from the database, as the database will not
accomodate this.

This seems to be a fix, but does not get to the root of the problem, as
they did not have this problem in Word 97.

Open to any solutions!!

The above is what I see in the Word mailmerge fieldname. When I
manually open the text file it appears like this:
" name
"," address ", etc...

The only difference I can see between the problem fieldname and the
others is the length.
If I take a valid field in the ASCII text file and add spaces to it, so
that the total field length is over 39, then the same thing happens to
it.
I've tried Unicode format as well, same problem.

Am I missing something here?

I would still be very suspicious of mergefield names that are preceeded and
followed by what appear to be spaces. I say appear to be, because they may
not always be treated as spaces depending up just what they are - Chinese
characters for instance that do not display as such when the text file is
opened.

--
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
wrote in message
oups.com...
The above is what I see in the Word mailmerge fieldname. When I
manually open the text file it appears like this:
" name
"," address ", etc...

The only difference I can see between the problem fieldname and the
others is the length.
If I take a valid field in the ASCII text file and add spaces to it, so
that the total field length is over 39, then the same thing happens to
it.
I've tried Unicode format as well, same problem.

Am I missing something here?