I read the other threads and they don't quite fit. We use the Hentzenwerke book on Office automation to do mail merges through word. But we use a header and a Word table as the data set - filling it from within our program. Works fine in OFFICE 2000 and earlier and this also works to do a mail merge on an existing document in OFFICE 2003 but we cannot get it to see that this is a WORD document so we cannot create new letters or update the mail merge fields showing up on existing ones. I couldn't see any clear documentation on how WORD handles tables in 2003 like this.

We did this to avoid problems with ODBC as others have encountered and also exporting to Excel with large text fields like memo fields that would get cut off.

Jim

Below is the overall code to add a new letter:

*Update the data list header (create it if it doesn't exist). Do this first
*so user not confused by WORD opening up and having to backtrack to SIM to
*make changes.
LOCAL lcfield, llchange
lcfield = ''
llchange= .f.
DO updhdr WITH filenam, lcfield, llchange

RELEASE ALL LIKE o_word*
RELEASE ALL LIKE o_doc*
o_word = createobject("Word.Application")
o_doc = o_word.documents.add()
*1/16/02 JAS Added '"' around path
o_word.activedocument.saveas('"'+gc_letpath+RTRIM(filenam)+'.DOC'+'"')
o_doc.application.visible = .T. &&makes that application come up

*Now create a header source - this is a DOC file that just contains
*the field information for the WORD document we are doing a merge for.
*This turns the document into a merge document as well.
IF llchange
DO attachdr WITH filenam, lcfield
ENDIF

Here is our Edit section:

*Update the data list header (create it if it doesn't exist). Do this first
*so user not confused by WORD opening up and having to backtrack to SIM to
*make changes.
LOCAL lcfield, llchange
lcfield = ''
llchange= .f.
DO updhdr WITH txt_file, lcfield, llchange

PRIVATE o_doc
RELEASE ALL LIKE o_doc*
*1/16/02 JAS Added '"' around path
*o_doc = getobject('"'+ALLTRIM(txt_file)+'"') &&opens up the document in appropriate MSOFFICE tool
*Redid so document open in WORD in OFFICE 97 - 1/16/02 JAs
o_word = createobject("Word.Application")
o_doc = o_word.documents.open('"'+ALLTRIM(txt_file)+'"')
o_doc.application.visible = .T. &&makes that application come up

*Attach the data list header.
IF llchange
DO attachdr WITH txt_file, lcfield
ENDIF

Attachdr is below:

*********************************************************************
PROC attachdr
*********************************************************************
*Attaches header to open WORD document & checks if LETT_LST has info
*properly stored.
*10/21/01 JAS Initial version

PARAMETER cfilenam, cfieldlist &&name of the document.

local laheader, lcfilenam

*Remove any path stuff - just want the name w/o extension or path.
lcfilenam = cfilenam
lcfilenam = FILEPAR2(lcfilenam) &&1/20/02 JAS

*IF AT('.',lcfilenam) > 0
* lcfilenam = SUBSTR(lcfilenam,1,AT('.',lcfilenam)-1)
*ENDIF
*DO WHILE AT('\',lcfilenam) > 0 &&strip leading dashes
* lcfilenam = RIGHT(lcfilenam,LEN(lcfilenam)-AT('\',lcfilenam))
*ENDDO

lcfilenam = UPPER(ALLTRIM(lcfilenam))

*Attach the header to the new document or update it for an existing one.
*Need to use unique name since no simple way of removing header from an
*existing merge document.
WAIT WINDOW 'Creating New Merge Document Header' TIMEOUT .5
DIME laheader[1,6] &&since local must initialize
STORE '' TO laheader
*1/16/02 JAS rename the header to .HDR extension so not confused with the documents
*=ADIR(laheader, gc_letpath+lcfilenam+'_HEADER*.DOC')
=ADIR(laheader, gc_letpath+lcfilenam+'_HEADER*.*')
*1/16/02 JAS Added '"' around path
*o_doc.mailmerge.createheadersource(gc_letpath+lcfilenam+'_HEADER'+ALLTRIM(SUBSTR(SYS(2015),3,8))+'.DOC', , , cfieldlist)
o_doc.mailmerge.createheadersource('"'+gc_letpath+lcfilenam+'_HEADER'+ALLTRIM(SUBSTR(SYS(2015),3,8))+'.HDR'+'"' , , , cfieldlist)
*Save new header
o_doc.save()

*Remove all of the old headers
IF TYPE('laheader') = 'C'
FOR lnheader = 1 TO ALEN(laheader,1)
WAIT WINDOW 'Removing old header '+laheader[lnheader,1] TIMEOUT .5
ERASE gc_letpath+laheader[lnheader,1]
ENDFOR
ENDIF

RETURN