MarcVS said:
I've integrated Albert D. Kallal's Mail Merge into my Access project, but
I have this little question.
The MDB database is a split database. The backend (data) and the
Wordtemplates are on the server, the FrontEnd is on the user's computer.
I can see that the merge.888 file is made on the server. This, I think,
will give problems, since the users 'merge.888' files will overwrite each
other. Or am I missing something?
Can you help me on this?
My design assumes that the templates for the most part are local. If you
have two users trying to open the same template at the same time, you likely
to have trouble anyway.
Furthermore, I *used* to leave the datasource of the documents alone. That
means *after* you built a template, my code did not RE-SET the data source
(to merge.888) for the documents. I did not want to waste this additional
setup time and slow down the code by re-setting the datasource EVERY time
for each document merge. (this causes a performance hit).
However, in the last few years, I have broke down, and now DO IN FACT set
the datasouce EACH TIME a document is merged. I did this because people were
copying in documents from other locations (and, their merge.888 location was
traveling *with* the document).
So, at this point in time, since I *always* re-set the datasouce before a
merge, I have NO arguments left to make the merge.888 data source THE SAME
AS THE LOCATION of the document. Remember, by leaving the datasource in the
same location, users can launch/edit the temple outside of my system.
I going to change this assuming in the next few minutes. What this means is
that I am going to move the merge.888 to the users *local* temp directory.
The "loss" here is that users will now HAVE to use my template editor to
launch/edit existing templates. Users will likely will NOT be able to simply
go into the directory where the word document is and edit/change the
template (because now the merge.888 location will change from user to user)
I will be using the windows api to request the location of the LOCAL temp
scratch dir.
I guess I asking do you think users will find it rude that you HAVE TO
launch/edit the templates via my "edit" button as opposed to be able to open
up the documents direct in the folder? I am under the impression that some
of my users will find this a bit rude and presumptuous on my part.
Do you think the advantage of moving the merge.888 to the local machine
outweighs the loss of the ability to edit/launch the tempaltes by simply
browsing to the word document in their template directory?
Give me some feedback on this issue, and if you don't think it really any of
problem to make this change in design...I will change this in the next few
hours....
