Limitation Automating MailMerger on Server

  • Thread starter Stephen Barrett
  • Start date
S

Stephen Barrett

Let me start off by saying I fully understand that automating word on a
server is frowned upon. I totally agree. However, the powers to be are
forcing certain items on me.

Our application currently does word mailmerge automation on a server. Our
business users create somewhat complex word documents with mail mergefields
and upload them to our server. These documents contain complicated IF logic
using the appropriate field codes to hide and show sections of document
based on the values of the data in the merge field.

We use a tab delimited text file for the data file. Using Word com
automation, we open the word document and tell it to merge with the data
file. The problem we have is that we cannot use more than 255 mergefields
in our data file or Word will popup a prompt on the server (VERY BAD) asking
for the delimiter. If we keep it 255 and under Word determines the
delimiter and everything works fine.

We now have a requirement for some documents that will require much more
than 255 merge fields. We can't split them into different documents as part
of our design. I have been told that a text based data file can support
much more than 255 columns. The question I have is how to do this without
Word popping up a prompt asking for the delimiter?

We have looked at 3rd party utilities such as Aspose and a product by
syncfusion, but none of these support the conditional field codes (IF
statements and such). The expect just plain merge fields.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post.
 

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