Data Source Info in Saved Documents Changes

[Kim]

My company uses Windows 2000 and we just upgraded to Office 2003 Professional
from Office 2000. The problem is this:

When users create and save a mail merge, then create another mail merge
using the same Excel data source file (revised), the info in the mail merge
fields for the previously saved mail merge changes to whatever the revised
data source info is. Therefore, it is useless to save the previous document.

This didn't seem to be an issue in Office 2000. Any advice would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Not sure really, but it sounds as if you are using preview to go to the
record you want, then saving a copy of the document, rather than actually
performing the merge. In the former case, you are saving all the
"mergefields" you had in your mail merge main document, along with some
information from the currently selected record. In the latter case, the
resulting document should not have any connection with the data source.

In the former case, it may be that Word 2000 does not try so hard to refresh
the preview data as Word 2003.

Probably the only really safe way to save the document in a way that avoids
this problem is to "unlink" the merge fields before saving, e.g. by
selecting everything and using crtl-shift-F9. Unfortunately that doesn't
usually unlink /everything/ and it does not detach the data source, but you
will find some macro code to help in messages posted recently by Charles
Kenyon.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Kim]

Thanks Peter. I will try what you suggested.

Not sure really, but it sounds as if you are using preview to go to the
record you want, then saving a copy of the document, rather than actually
performing the merge. In the former case, you are saving all the
"mergefields" you had in your mail merge main document, along with some
information from the currently selected record. In the latter case, the
resulting document should not have any connection with the data source.

In the former case, it may be that Word 2000 does not try so hard to refresh
the preview data as Word 2003.

Probably the only really safe way to save the document in a way that avoids
this problem is to "unlink" the merge fields before saving, e.g. by
selecting everything and using crtl-shift-F9. Unfortunately that doesn't
usually unlink /everything/ and it does not detach the data source, but you
will find some macro code to help in messages posted recently by Charles
Kenyon.

Peter Jamieson