Word mail merge, characters/change or go missing!!

[mcauleypeter]

I am using MS office 2000 to do mail merge from Excel into Word. I am using a number of languages varying from English to Bulgarian to Korean to produce the a document in each language with the same original text.

The Excel file is in Aerial Unicode font. When I merge into Word, characters disappear eg the degree sign (alt 248, °). Other characters appear as question marks. I had used Tahoma font to start with and thought changing to a Unicode font might resolve the issue, but it does not.

Any suggestions?
Peter

 

[macropod]

Hi Peter,

Try connecting to your malmerge source via DDE. The advantage of this is that the merge preserves the source data's formatting.

To use the DDE data transfer method when you're connecting to the data source (eg Excel) during a mail merge, all you have to do in Word is click Tools|Options|General,then click "Confirm conversion at Open".

At the step in the mail-merge process where you connect to your data file, after you locate the file you want to connect to, the "Confirm Data Source" dialog box opens. Now, click "Application via DDE (*.???)", then "OK". In the Application dialog box, select the table/range containing the data to merge, and then click "OK". The mailmerge output will now be formatted the same as in the source file.

It's probably a good idea to turn off the "Confirm conversion at Open" option after you finish your mailmerge.


Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[mcauleypeter]

Dear Macropod

Many thanks for the reply & suggestions.
I looked at what is happenning when I opened the Word document. It has automatically selected 'DDE data transfer'. I had also previously selected 'Confirm conversion at open'.

I went through all the various option again this morning, but again the characters did not appear.
Interestingly, at home, using MS Office 2003 & Windows XP, the degree sign becomes visible, but the East European characters still appear as question marks. So it must be a function of how Office handles characters.

Transferring part of my Excel file into Word (cut & paste), the mail lerge will work fully.
However, my spreadsheet is 200 cells by 50, so I can't take it all into Word!!
I have also tried it from Access with the same problem.

Regards, Peter

 

[macropod]

Hi Peter,

I overlooked the significance of the Unicode part of your problem.

Word 2000 doesn't support Unicode characters in mail merge sources that aren't in Word document format when they're attached via DDE, ODBC, or any other converter that doesn't support Unicode characters.

You can work around this, by open the Excel file and copying/pasting the data into a new Word document. You can then use this document as the mail merge data source.

It's curious that your Office 2003 installation handles some characters but not others. Maybe there's a font issue, though the degree symbol doesn't need unicode support - it's part of the std font set.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[mcauleypeter]

Hi
Yes, - Unicode!!

Microsoft say that they fully support Unicode, and appear to have done for a number of years.
I have copied the Excel sheet into Ariel Unicode font, and forced the Word document to accept the input as Ariel Unicode, but that does not work.

The degree sign (either alt 248 or alt 0176) is a standard font character and should copy over. That is the really odd part of it.
Another odd issue, that a Spanish degree sign does copy over!!
Do you know a way of interrogating the character to determine what it is in the old ASCII system?

thanks, Peter

 

[macropod]

Hi Peter,

Whilst the Office 2000 apps individually supported Unicode, Word didn't accept it for merge purposes from anything other than a Word-format file. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/250322/en-us

which conforms what I posted a short while ago.

Do you know a way of interrogating the character to determine what it is in the old ASCII system?

You could try pasting the character into a cell in Excel and using = Code(A1) to find the ASCII value - change A1 to the appropriate cell reference.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[bowtruckles]

A solution that has worked for me at any rate involves converting the spreadsheet file to a csv text file, simply saving as such in Excel. Then I open the new file in Notepad and save it as a unicode file (selected in the save file dialog). Select the new file as the data source and make sure unicode is selected in the mail-merge dialog box. When you merge to new document the unicode characters are merged intact into the new doc.