Excel DDE Mail Merge

[Eric Fleet]

Our company recently migrated to Office 2007. Since then we have had issues
with mail merges.

Following Microsoft guidance, we are using "MS Excel Worksheets via DDE" for
the merge. This retains the Excel formatting that we were used to in Office
XP. If the files are local to the box, they can be opened without issue. As
soon as they are put on a network drive or even on another PC and accesed
over the network, I get the error "Word could not re-establish a DDE
connection to Microsoft Ecel to complete the current task."

This same issue exists in several word/excel documents, some with one
record, some with many. They all work fine when copied to the desktop. They
all fail when accessed through the network.

All servers are Windows Server 2003. All updates have been run on computers
we are testing from.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

This same issue exists in several word/excel documents, some with one

record, some with many. They all work fine when copied to the desktop. They
all fail when accessed through the network.

FWIW I have had varying results when connecting to both .xls and .xlsx
files on network drives via DDE. The basic problem is that although the
connection sometimes works, nothing I have done so far makes the process
work every time.

Some things to consider...
a. When you open the file in Excel, do you get warning messages of any
kind? if you get security warnings related to macros in the document,
you will probably need to ensure that the path containing the .xls(s/m)
is listed in Excel's "Trusted locations" (see Excel Office Button->Excel
options->trust Center->Trust Center Settings->trusted Locations.
b. does the following work:
- open Excel
- open the data source you want to use
- open Word
- open the mail merge main document?

I ask because here, Word seems to manage to start Excel, and Excel seems
to manage to open the requested file. It's just that the connection does
not complete. I have been wondering if there is a either a timeout
problem but do not know how to fix that if there is.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Eric Fleet]

I do not get warnings of any kind. I will look into the trusted locations
setting and see if I can make it work.

Your suggestion about opening the file in Excel seems to work. Not sure why,
but it is working in my whopping two tests so far.

Another interesting issue that I will create another thread for involves the
size of the spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet with 20+ columns and 2000+
rows. It will not import via DDE regardless. If I reduce the row count to
1000, it will open. Odd.