Office 2002 Mail Merge - stops and restarts in the middle of printing

I am running Office 2002 (XP) SP3 on XP Pro SP1 on a Dell Precision 2GHz Xeon with 1GB RAM. I have a database with about 58000 records in it in MS Access, and I do filters to get groups who have paid on a certain date, then export the data (maybe 50-150 records) to Excel and then use that as a data source for a mail merge in Word. This is used to print out receipts on special paper, from an HP 3650. The problem is that more often than not, with no warning, error or other message, when printing the merged data, I get maybe the A through C part of the names to print then it starts over with A again. Sometimes it might do A through M, no real repeatable pattern, and as I mentioned, no error. Nothing in the event viewer, etc. Just the fact that the merge is not printing all the records. Any ideas as to why this is, and what to do to fix it?
Thanks! johnny5

 

I can't help with a specific 'this is the problem' but I can make a general comment that may point to the issue.

Access is a nice database app but it is not intended for large numbers of records. No way to say how many is too many since that depends on how complex your database is but I'd say that even if you have a single table, you are pushing it.

When you select parts and send them to Excel (or any place else) you could easily have data that looks fine on display but has internal errors that exported along with the data and are causing your mail merge to blow up..

Try a compacting and repair of the database. Can't hurt and may help. In fact, I think I'd do that about once a week with the size you have now if you are updating records with any frequency.

You should consider getting a higher end database product like MS-SQL to handle data storage. Not sure about the other available products but with MS-SQL, there is a free utility that will push all the data to SQL and leave the Access front end to manage data entry screens, reports, etc. so it looks the same to you. With a non-Microsoft database you could import your data but I imagine you'd have to rebuild all the other parts and that is a major pain.

 

We are hoping to transition this to a SQL system in the future. However in the meantime it works great on a local front-and back-end, but not if the back-end is on the server and the front on a workstation. We have only 4 stations, and a Dell PowerEdge Xeon 2.8Ghz server and Precision Xeon workstations. We are using a hub like this: http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=features&pathtype=purchase&sku=3C16754-US
Would a better hub maybe help out? The front of this database has links to about 40 tables on the server.

 

I'd go with a switch rather than a hub.

Even though this is a high-speed hub, I think they are limited to half-duplex traffic (send then receive then send then ...) rather than full-duplex where the devices can both be sending and receiving packets at the same time. Also with the intense traffic you get from the sort of mail-merge you are running, you may be bandwidth limiting the PCs since a 100Mbps hub will normally take the 100Mbps and divide it among the connected devices so that when things are busy on the network, each PC could get only a portion of the 100Mbps.

You will get lots better thru-put with a switch and with the PC network cards set to 100Mbps Full-duplex. Assuming you have decent cat5 or better wiring it should do fine. A decent switch should also be able to provide the full 100Mbps to each connected PC.

For a 4 PC office, I think you would do fine with one of the SOHO router/switch devices that you can pick up for around $50 but if you will be going above 4 devices you probably need to get a dedicated switch since the router/switches are usually not up to handling high network traffic volume and most only have 4 ports anyway.

 

Thanks Newt,
Do you have any recommendations or experience with a particular brand or model of dedicated switch that you would recommend? We are looking for 16 port to allow for future growth.