Dynamic Data Exchange failure

Question

Why am I receiving the "Something Went Wrong" message when trying to mail merge a MS Excel 2013 list with MS Word 2013 label document?  I have followed the instructions for DDE but to no avail.

Answer 1

Why do you have to continue to use DDE?  I cannot think of any good reason.

It is not only in 2013 that the workbook is opened if you use DDE.  That also happened with prior versions.

Answer 2

We have the same problem.  We have used DDE for years and will need to continue.  We know that in Office 2013, Excel must be opened (why in 2013 and not earlier versions is another question) but when we link a document to an Excel spreadsheet, we get (2) "Something Went Wrong" pop-ups while its trying to start Excel.  Then all works fine, we can update, etc... We get the same thing when closing the Word doc and saving as it tries to open Excel again and query.  Just do a Save of the Word doc while it's linked and the Excel spreadsheet is open, you get a "Something Went Wrong pop-up.  Word tries to close Excel, then open Excel just on a save.  Crazy...  Eventually it works but what a pain and time consuming.

Answer 3

It is not necessary to add the $ in the Excel source. See http://www.gmayor.com/formatting\_word\_fields.htm.

Answer 4

Doug - Thank you for your reply.  Unfortunately, neither solution solves the problem that is hindering my efforts in preparing labels using the MS Word Mail Merge function.

I wanted to use DDE because in the help dialog provided it suggests the use of this technology if you want to bring the formatting from MS Excel into the merged labels.  (One of the merge fields is formatted as "currency" and I wanted the $ sign to be included.)  I tried the DDE again using your suggestion but it gave me the same "Something Went Wrong" message.

Then I tried the OLE DB Files method and while it brought over the information from the MS Excel spreadsheet it was converted to the default formatting of the MS Word document.  I also tried the suggestion of converting the formatting in the MS Excel spreadsheet to "Text" but that removed the $ sign from the entries in MS Excel. 

I finally solved the issue in a more simplistic but less desirable way.  I changed the formatting of the merge fields in the MS Word document, AND manually added a $ sign to the text field in the MS Excel spreadsheet.  This was considerably more time consuming than was satisfactory to me.

Doesn't this really represent a "bug" that should be fixed?

Answer 5

Try using the default OLE DB Database Files method of connection to the data source.

DDE is old technology that involves opening the workbook and that can fail if you have Excel open and were taking an action in Excel that was not complete - such as editing a formula.

However, if you are wedded to DDE, make sure that in Excel, under File>Options>Advanced>General, there is no tick in the box for "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)".