WD: "Too Many Data Fields" Managing Mail Merge in Source View

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c
• Microsoft Word for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0a
• Microsoft Word for Macintosh, versions 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.1a
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition

SYMPTOMS

In a mail merge main document, if you click the Edit Data Source button on the Mail Merge toolbar, click the View Source button, click the Manage Fields button on the Database toolbar, and then click OK, one of the following error messages may occur:

   Record 1 contained too many data fields.

   -or-

   Record 1 contained too few data fields.

CAUSE

This happens if you are using a separate header source. When you click the Manage Fields button on the Database toolbar, Word opens the data source file rather than the header source file and incorrectly treats the first data row as the header row.

Word stores any changes you make in the data source instead of the header source file. Then, when you click OK to close the Manage Fields dialog box, Word displays the "...too many data fields" error message.

The same error message also occurs each time you open your data source; for example, it occurs when you click the View Merged Data button on the Mail Merge toolbar and switch from one record to another.

NOTE: If you notice that the first record in your data source contains field names instead of data, you may have edited your data file in Source view, or you may not have a separate header source file attached after all.

WORKAROUND

NOTE: Once you receive the error message, the data file will not be usable unless you open the file and compare the number of columns to the number of columns in your data header file. More than likely the number of columns in the data source will be larger than in the header file. You will need to delete the columns from the data file that should not be there and you ned to make sure that the column information matches up with the column information from the data header source. Otherwise, you will need to create a new data file.

When you use a mail merge header source file, perform all your data management tasks in Data Form view, not in Source view. In other words, do not click the View Source button in the Data Form dialog box.

If you want to manage your mail merge data source in Source view, you cannot use a separate header source file.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Word listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

REFERENCES

"Microsoft Word User's Guide," version 6.0, pages 646, 686-687