Word files are binary format and are not changeable by this technique: the characters are positionally important in the document structure and any changes in length will screw the doc completely..
You can go for a number of approaches at various levels of technicality, but the simplest is just to save the document as Rich Text Format into a Type 19 file, and you can then easily do a CHANGE() function replace on the contents. I can't remember exactly, but mail merge fields are identified by a fairly obvious prefix, something like "\MERGEFIELD name". It's worth reading up a little about RTF format (the format is published and publically available on the web) before you do so you know some of the escape characters when replacing.
Brian Leach
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 16:09:29 -0500 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I am running UV 9.5.1... on windows NT (PICK flavor).
I want to be able to read in a .doc file created in Word 2000, do a string
replace, and then write out the file as a new .doc file. I have tried
using the standard READ and READSEQ. I use the CHANGE command [REC =
CHANGE(REC,txta,txtb)] and then WRITE (or WRITESEQ). In each case I get
the anticipated results but when I attempt to launch the document in Word
2000 I get THE "unknown file format" error. I have to figure that some
characters imbedded in the original document are being stripped by the
limitations of the uniVerse READ and READSEQ commands thus making this
method not practical. I did this in the past - in another life maybe - but
this is my first attempt with WORD 2000. All practical suggestions
appreciated.
dan
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