Edit reicpient not resetting -

[Yve Ke]

Hi
i have a mail merge document which I want to use over and over again. But i
Have found that if the previous user has filtered the recipients and I want
to filter them but in a different way I, at step 2/3 of the mail merge
process, want to EdIt the recipients a different way. I click the edit
recipients button(mail recipients button) and then remove all filtered data
(remove blue arrows) but for some reason the old filter bounces back.
Shouldn't I be able to edit the recipients at this point and create a new
filter. I am a teacher and I can have two students sitting beside one another
doing the same thing but getting different things happening. I was thinking
maybe this was a known issue !!! The only way I can precede with the new mail
merge in my already existing merge document is to browse and find the data
source again and then continue but should I have to do this everytime? If i
need to then sobeit but it seemed a bit silly.
Yve

 

[Peter Jamieson]

There are definitely problems with filtering with some types of data source.
(whcta are you using?) If you click the drop-down at the top of one of the
columns in the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box and select Advanced, you
/may/ be able to see what Word is doing - sometimes, for example, it
duplicates the last condition in the list that you can enter there.

However, Word complicates things by using two different methods to filter.
If for example you use the drop-down to select a particular value (say,
Country="UK"), Word generates a bit of SQL like "WHERE (Country = "UK" )"
and uses that when it gets the data from the source. But if you
check/uncheck individual entries, Word just sets a flag internally for each
record selected/unselected and remembers to include/exclude it in the merge.

I'm not sure that that helps you, but if you are using the second method, it
might be worth seeing if using the first method instead works better.
Otherwise, re-connecting to the data source is actually likely to be the
simplest way to clear out the old filter conditions. However, if you are
always using the same source, it may make sense to record a VBA Macro that
closes the source and re-opens it, and assign it to a toolbar button. That
way, you should be able to restart with a single click.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Yve Ke]

Yes, thank you that was extremely helfpul. What happens is that when i
re-open from the last time it was used it would launch an sql statement which
I accept. Then the link will not go away, no matter how hard I try. So I
have done as you have said = a refresh button on the toolbar to relink every
time. It sees ok now and very user friendly.
Yve

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You can probably get rid of those SQL security questions, and it may improve
things in general. But there are security implications. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825765/en-us

Peter Jamieson