Mail Merge and Lotus Notes

[Mark Haffner]

I are a skoolteacher. Last year I used an excel
spreadsheet, merged it into a word document, and
distributed grades via e-mail through outlook. Something
changed in our network setup over the summer so now it
doesn't work.
I guess my question is, how can I tell where Word
actually sends e-mail messages when you do a merge in
word? How can I amend those settings?

 

[Mark Haffner]

p.s. I am using Windows XP, MS Office XP.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I'm in the middle of having a look at what various specific mail clients do,
but...

Broadly speaking, Word tries to send using the MAPI subsystem, and precisely
what MAPI does depends on
a. what is currently set up as the default e-mailer in IE Tools|Internet
Options|Programs. (The defaults are stored in the registry in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Clients
b. what entries are in WIN.INI
c. which versions of the "mapi dlls" are currently installed - these may be
MS versions, or versions installed by a 3rd party, e.g. with Lotus Notes.
d. (in some cases) whether or not you have multiple mail profiles, and what
your default profile is

To be honest, I don't really think you should attempt the following unless
you are confident that you can restore your original environment, but this
is what I would probably do:
a. log off/close any e-mail client software and Word before each step...
b. look at the windows\system32 directory (e.g. c:\winnt\system32) for the
following files, and save the current versions in a subdirectory:
mapi.dll
mapi32.dll
mapisvc.inf
also save c:\<windows directory>\WIN.INI
c. change the default e-mailer in IE to Outlook (or OE) and run Outlook (or
OE) at least once. Then
- check the merge
- see if the 3 files in system32 are the same as the saved ones
d. if the merge still does not work, search the system for a program called
fixmapi and run it. Try the merge again.
e. to get back the original situation, change the default e-mailer back to
Lotus Notes, and if necessary, copy the saved files back where they came
from.