Topic: Mail merge in Word truncates list of authors  (Read 2493 times)

For our conference, we allow a rather long list of authors.
It is possible for submitting authors to name up to 20 co-authors.

We created a book of abstract based on an Excel export from ConfTool and a mail merge with Word.
When we looked at the results in Word, we found that longer authors’ lists were truncated.

How can we generate a mail merge that will include the full list of authors?

It is true that for the Word mail merge function, you might run into problems when you try to create longer lists in Word based on one specific cell in Excel:
If the characters that are filled in a cell in Excel exceed a certain number, they will be truncated in Word (see images 1 & 2).

To solve this problem, please go to your exported ConfTool file in Excel format first.
Add another row just below the header row. In this new row, in the column “authors”, enter a placeholder text that exceeds 10,000 characters in the cell (see image 3). Use a tool to generate such a text, e.g.: https://getlorem.com. Save the file.

Continue to create the Word mail merge document and connect it to the new Excel file.

The problem should be solved now.