It would appear that the "cell" can hold nearly 33,000 characters but the column width is limited to just 255 character (ie the colums can not be expanded to show the entire cell contents).
Have you tried adding the text as a "Comment" box instead?
Seems you're sorted for now, which is good. Must admit, I've always been deeply skeptical of mailmerge and Word - just because Word always arses about with layout, seemingly whenever it feels like it.
I tend to use an Excel-only approach. Lines of data per kid, and then do relative cell references into a report in the printable window. Then it's just a matter of making a little macro that changes the cell ref you want, fills the print area with that kid's data, and prints it. Best of all, retrospectively you can just find the kid, and print that one's report alone.
Pretty much gibberish, I suspect, but I'll let you have a sample of what I mean when we meet up next month. :-)
my dear! The mailmerge option is supposed to be a stop gap measure. It momentarily looked like it wasn't going to be 'easier'. But actually, comperd to what we had before it is a million times easier.
I look forward to seeing your example and may be planning a trip to visit at some point anyway if that's okay. You do make me look very stupid though, so I might have to pretend to understand and then go home and cry for a bit :)
There's a number of bits of Excel which have a 250/255 character limit.
We could embark upon an investigation of where the 250 charcater limit lays in your scenario, but whilst that would be technically interesting it wouldn't really help.
Can you set-up some other columns which reference the original column with?
So, in excel, assuming the text you want to mail merge is in cell B2, you would add the following formula in the next columns:
=MID(B2,1,250) (in cell C2) =MID(B2,251,250) (in cell d2)
That would copy across the first 250 characesr into cell C2 and the next 250 characters into cell d2.
If I remember right, then you put a column heading in C1 and D1 and you can mail merge those columns.
It might not look perfect, but it will copy the content across.
Wow, I love it when I demonstrate my ignorance and then demonstrate it further by failing to understand the responses I get to it! The problem has been solved by editing the merge document rather than the spreadsheet. I am really glad for everyone's input though - it goes to show what a truly tiny bubble I operate in usually and offered a range of different perspectives on it
Comments 6
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP051992911033.aspx (Excel 2003)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/264626 (Excel 2000)
It would appear that the "cell" can hold nearly 33,000 characters but the column width is limited to just 255 character (ie the colums can not be expanded to show the entire cell contents).
Have you tried adding the text as a "Comment" box instead?
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Reply
I tend to use an Excel-only approach. Lines of data per kid, and then do relative cell references into a report in the printable window. Then it's just a matter of making a little macro that changes the cell ref you want, fills the print area with that kid's data, and prints it. Best of all, retrospectively you can just find the kid, and print that one's report alone.
Pretty much gibberish, I suspect, but I'll let you have a sample of what I mean when we meet up next month. :-)
Reply
I look forward to seeing your example and may be planning a trip to visit at some point anyway if that's okay. You do make me look very stupid though, so I might have to pretend to understand and then go home and cry for a bit :)
Reply
We could embark upon an investigation of where the 250 charcater limit lays in your scenario, but whilst that would be technically interesting it wouldn't really help.
Can you set-up some other columns which reference the original column with?
So, in excel, assuming the text you want to mail merge is in cell B2, you would add the following formula in the next columns:
=MID(B2,1,250) (in cell C2)
=MID(B2,251,250) (in cell d2)
That would copy across the first 250 characesr into cell C2 and the next 250 characters into cell d2.
If I remember right, then you put a column heading in C1 and D1 and you can mail merge those columns.
It might not look perfect, but it will copy the content across.
Reply
Reply
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