WD2000: "Too Many Data Fields" Managing Mail Merge in Source View

ID: Q212359

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

In a mail merge main document, if you perform the following steps:

  1. Click the Edit Data Source button on the Mail Merge toolbar.


  2. Click the View Source button.


  3. Click the Manage Fields button on the Database toolbar.


  4. Click OK.


One of the following error messages may appear:
Record 1 contained too many data fields.
-or-

Record 1 contained too few data fields.
These errors only occur if you switch to Source view. They do not occur if you modify your data source in Data Form view.


CAUSE

This error occurs 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 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. 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: After you receive the error message, the data file is not 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 is greater than the number of columns in the header file. You need to delete the columns from the data file that should not be there, and you need to make sure that the column information matches the column information from the data header source. Otherwise, you must 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 Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

Additional query words: disappeared records switched gone 


Keywords          : kbdta word97 kbmerge wd2000 
Version           : WINDOWS:2000
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbbug

Last Reviewed: August 2, 1999