TABLE TOO LARGE FOR WORD TO SORT

[YOMAMAPAWA]

I do genealogy and I'm building monster tables. They are useless if
not complete, for purposes of sorting by spouse, place or date of
birth, parents, etc. When I reach a certain size I get that message.
The largest, currently, is 48,000 KB. They are simple text tables, no
graphics or bells and whistles, and I work in Normal view. What do?

 

[Graham Mayor]

Transfer the table to Excel and sort it there.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Also, note that 48 MB is above the maximum allowable size for a text-only
Word doc (the limit is 32 MB). Unless the document contains graphics or
something else besides text, there may be other problems ahead.

 

[YOMAMAPAWA]

Also, note that 48 MB is above the maximum allowable size for a text-only
Word doc (the limit is 32 MB). Unless the document contains graphics or
something else besides text, there may be other problems ahead.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Thank you both. Disaster. How limiting. I'm an absolute newbie at this
but an old programmer from the sixties. I'll have to build a new
program. HA! I don't have a clue where to begin. I'm attempting an
interactive search database using Word. Looks impossible. All I want
is COLLATION. I can't believe Word customers keep coming back with
such a strict limitation on their work. What do businesses do? Not
collate? Cut their vendors off when they become too many? I have 15
columns - surname, first name, surname spouse, first name spouse,
parents, surname mother, birth/death/marriage year, ditto month, ditto
day, ditto country, ditto state/shire/province, ditto county/commune,
ditto town, ditto parish. If ANY of these columns cannot be sorted,
the whole thing is useless. Any solutions? Should I buy Word 2007
Professional?

Graham, when I open Excel all I see is a sea of cells. I don't have a
clue - tried - how to copy my Word file into Excel. I've just scarcely
learned how to Merge/Split Columns. Using these products is EXACTLY
like being a member of a bovine herd, wandering aimlessly in idle
search of something tasty - no direction, no instructions - unless you
count the help files, which protocol of use seems to have no rhyme nor
reason. Like the cattle. If I had had to learn Cobol, Basic, or
Fortran - EVEN RPG - in this manner, I would still today be using a
collator to hand-sort all the data. Or sitting on the floor sorting
cards by color!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, I do maintain large databases in Excel and then use them to produce
mail merges in Word. How many records do you have? One specific advantage in
Excel (aside from the ability to deal with more records) is that you can use
Freeze Panes to keep the heading row and any desired number of columns in
view all the time so you don't lose your place.

 

[YOMAMAPAWA]

"Records." In the file I'm currently working there are, so far, 18,836
individuals, in three separate files - birth, death, marriage -
representing only the ancestors of my paternal grandmother. ( A quick
aside: We each have 4 grandparents, 8 g-grandparents, 16, gg-, 32
ggg-, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384,
32768............totaling maybe 65532. You can see how these files can
quickly grow, particularly if your ancestors were amongst the earliest
European settlers to the United States - they were almost all from
well-known families with excellent records, going back to Golgotha or
some dang where - and will steadily grow in scale. Losing my place is
OK, i just hit search and zoom to the spouse or whatever. What I'm
trying to ACCOMPLISH is collation - sorting everyone into year of
birth, say, then Mom, then spouse, then locale, in order to find what
they call the "Brick Wall" - the missing ancestor that ties you to the
others. Or to at least extrapolate.

I will have to teach myself to use Excel, haven't even begun. OR, copy
each file and tediously select only the pertinent columns, delete all
the rest, DO my sort, then compare. Nastay.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What I mean by "lose your place" is that if a record has so many columns
that they don't all fit on the screen, it is handy to have the leftmost
column or two frozen so that the person's name, for example, remains visible
when you scroll over to the far right. And in cases where you may have a lot
of columns of figures, it's handy to have the heading row frozen so you can
always see the column label.s

 

[YOMAMAPAWA]

What I mean by "lose your place" is that if a record has so many columns
that they don't all fit on the screen, it is handy to have the leftmost
column or two frozen so that the person's name, for example, remains visible
when you scroll over to the far right. And in cases where you may have a lot
of columns of figures, it's handy to have the heading row frozen so you can
always see the column label.s

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Ah, I see, said the blind old woman. Handy.

OK. I tried Excel, no dice. It WOULD NOT copy the 48MB doc. It WOULD
copy one section, but the first column showed up split. My original
format:

SUTHERLAND-1011,
HUGH

I tried a Merge Cells, but it just kept only the first half of the
first cell, it would not highlight.

I then tried replacing the "," with "*", still no luck. I tried
hitting the Format mark next to the file, as the help file suggested,
to "keep source format", no dice. I even went ahead and tried to sort
column 3, surname spouse, and it announced that they were different
sizes, thus no dice. I then "hid" all but the filled columns,
formatted row height to equal values - just to keep the little b_____d
happy - still no dice. I am at this point ready to toss the whole
system over the cliff and take up golf or Sumo wrestling. I give.

Aside: I think I have a serious problem somewhere. One would think
that this HP Pavilion a1587c would have the capacity to deal with
these simple tables, but everything I do the tower just HOWLS. It took
FIVE FULL MINUTES to accomplish that simple copy. This is not right,
what could it be?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not an Excel expert by any means, though some here may be. For a better
shot at reaching one, though, you might want to start at the other end,
posting in an Excel NG and asking about the best way to import a huge Word
table.

 

[Dan Freeman]

And for the best result with this much data, use a *DATABASE* application.
;-)

Dan

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, I suspect this is definitely a job for Access (or possibly dedicated
family tree software), but I have no experience with those at all.

 

[YOMAMAPAWA]

Yes, I suspect this is definitely a job for Access (or possibly dedicated
family tree software), but I have no experience with those at all.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Ya, guy at Office Depot told me the same thing an hour ago. Access
sounds good, but FTM, Family Tree Maker, is grossly flawed in that
it's not interactive. That's all I want, to "play" with the dang
thang. I found some ancestors who were VERY difficult to trace (French
Canadian, my French is limited, obscure surname, etc.) by a simple
process of extrapolation, using my own interactive database/table. If
I can get this thing to fly, we might end up with a PRICELESS tool/
process for genealogical research. I call it Carpet Bombing. Flush
those pesky buggers out. Find everyone who ever married into the
family, where, when, even WHY can't hurt............Mama's name, HER
Mama's name, the NEIGHBORS' names, the weather, the political
climate..............now that's just silly, but my meaning is clear.
But it can't be done without simple collation.