[[email protected]]

Hi

I am looking at carrying out a mailmerge from SQL server to a meaty
report template.

The number of fields is likely to be about 300.

Does this exceed the Word single mailmerge limit?

Thanks

Brian

[macropod[_2_]]

Hi Brian,

The maximum # of fields Word will recognise for a mailmerge is 255. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294688. This article also
suggests a workaround if you need more than 255 data fields.

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


wrote in message ...
Hi

I am looking at carrying out a mailmerge from SQL server to a meaty
report template.

The number of fields is likely to be about 300.

Does this exceed the Word single mailmerge limit?

Thanks

Brian

[Peter Jamieson]

FWIW as far as I am aware the 255 limit mentioned in the article that
macropod references actually refers to the number of columns you get to
see in the Edit Recipients dialog box.

Doing a test with Word 2003 and SQL Server 2000 here (just to take a
combination I happen to have to hand) I could access a 1000-column table
via the old SQL Server OLE DB provider - the Edit Recipient dialog does
become pretty useless (it also has problems if the row count goes above
1000 or 10000 or some such), but the full field list is displayed in the
merge field drop and you can insert your own { MERGEFIELD } fields
manually if that fails.

(to be honest, this is different from what I remember, which suggests
tht I haven't looked for a very long time).

What you are more likely to encounter - so it is worth checking - are
limitations on the total amount of data you can have in a record, e.g.
AFAICR there's a number of fields per record limit of 1024 in SQL Server
2000), but a maximum data per row of something quite small like 8192
bytes or some such - although that must exclude blob-type fields, and I
suspect that all those limits have been relaxed considerably in later
versions of SQL Server.

Personally, I'd consider creating test data with something like double
the number of columns you have at present, using real data, and see how
Word deals with it.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

wrote:
Hi

I am looking at carrying out a mailmerge from SQL server to a meaty
report template.

The number of fields is likely to be about 300.

Does this exceed the Word single mailmerge limit?

Thanks

Brian

[[email protected]]

On 22 Apr, 16:49, Peter Jamieson
wrote:
FWIW as far as I am aware the 255 limit mentioned in the article that
macropod references actually refers to the number of columns you get to
see in the Edit Recipients dialog box.

Doing a test with Word 2003 and SQL Server 2000 here (just to take a
combination I happen to have to hand) I could access a 1000-column table
via the old *SQL Server OLE DB provider - the Edit Recipient dialog does
become pretty useless (it also has problems if the row count goes above
1000 or 10000 or some such), but the full field list is displayed in the
merge field drop and you can insert your own { MERGEFIELD } fields
manually if that fails.

(to be honest, this is different from what I remember, which suggests
tht I haven't looked for a very long time).

What you are more likely to encounter - so it is worth checking - are
limitations on the total amount of data you can have in a record, e.g.
AFAICR there's a number of fields per record limit of 1024 in SQL Server
2000), but a maximum data per row of something quite small like 8192
bytes or some such - although that must exclude blob-type fields, and I
suspect that all those limits have been relaxed considerably in later
versions of SQL Server.

Personally, I'd consider creating test data with something like double
the number of columns you have at present, using real data, and see how
Word deals with it.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk



wrote:
Hi

I am looking at carrying out a mailmerge from SQL server to a meaty
report template.

The number of fields is likely to be about 300.

Does this exceed the Word single mailmerge limit?

Thanks

Brian- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thank you Peter and Micropod

Very useful - I'll do some testing

Brian