Record or Page Limits for Word Mail Merge?

[E-Double]

Are there any practical record or page limits for MS Word Mail Merge? For
some reason whenever we try to use the Mail Merge on forms with more than 500
records/pages we get 'out of memory' errors on Word 2003 or 'the file is too
large' errors on Word 2007 - even on high-end machines with 4GB of ram. TIA
....

 

[finalword]

Are you using Outlook contacts as your data source? I've seen problems like
this when using a Public Contact list with over 250 items.

 

[E-Double]

Thanks for the replies guys. We are importing fields from an Excel
spreadsheet. Also, does disabling Spellcheck and viewing of picture objects
during the mail merge enhance performance (ie reduce errors like this) ?

e.

 

[finalword]

There are no limits to the data. Turning off spellcheck and pictures
shouldn't really help that much. Though you could be running into a system
resource problem.

 

[E-Double]

We tried it on an XP Pro/Office 2003 machine with 2GB of ram and 50GB of free
disk space, as well as a Vista/Office 2007 machine and it failed both times.
Slightly different error messages, but it still will not save the document
after the merge is complete. I think that they are unable to edit the
document as well without getting an error. Not sure if the autosave feature
is failing in the background too or has anything to do with that issue. Its
just a mail merge importing user information for like 550 users into a form.

e.

 

[E-Double]

Just found out what the problem is - they updated the form used for the mail
merge last spring from the one they were using for the past several years
(that worked) and for some reason the new form fails every time. So its
something in the form layout and not the mail merge/import data process. The
users did not tell us for two days that it was a new form though - they just
said: "yeah, this has always worked and I have been doing it for years ..."

Thanks again for the feedback guys, this was a tough one.

e.