Mail Merge Issue

[BC]

I've recently experienced an issue with a mail merge using Office XP. Up
until recently everything worked fine.

I have a client using Office XP. They have a form letter in word and the
mailing list is in Excel.

She goes thru the motions with the Mail Merge Wizard and everything appears
normal until the last step of "Complete the Merge". When she clicks that
(Complete the Merge) you can see the letter(s) update but the e-mail itself
is never generated and thusly never sent.

Windows XP SP2 (patched current)
Office XP (current)
Outlook 2003

I should note, the updgrade to Outlook 2003 is new, however the problem
first occurred with Office XP's version of Outlook.

This merge litterally just stopped working the other day when it had been
working fine prior.

Thanks

 

[Peter Jamieson]

"Disappearing emails" is occasionally reported but there seems to be no
single obvious reason for it. broadly speaking, version A of Word does not
tend to work too well with version B of Outlook, but from what you say, the
upgrade to OL2003 was probably a response to this problem rather than the
cause of it. Is that the case?

Some things to try:
a. Check Outlook Tools|Options|Other|"Advanced options"|"Enable mail
logging (troubleshooting)". Then restart.
b. if you have a COM Addin called bxAutoZip (see Outlook
Tools|Options|Other|"Advanced Options"|"COM Addins") disable it temporarily.
(If you have other addins and disabling them will do no harm, I'd do that
too).
c. make sure you know where your .pst file is, make a backup copy, and run
the SCANPST.EXE utility - on my system it's in

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033 )
d. recreate your Outlook profile (I don't have a good set of instructions
for that right now)

Some questions:
e. could this problem be related to a specific update? (i.e. can some one
look and say it worked before such-and-such a date, and after the update
recorded in Control Panel|Add or Remove Programs| it stopped working
f. is Outlook the default Mail program (IE Tools|Internet Options|programs)
?
g. what kind of merge is she doing (HTML, plain text, attachment)?

Peter Jamieson

 

[BC]

The problem arose while she was still using Outlook XP, the upgrade to 2003
occurred just last week, we moved over to Exchange today and the upgrade was
provided with Small Business Server.

She has no COM Addins at all.

We can't tie it to any specific event/update.

Outlook is the default mail program.

She's just merging customer names off of an Excel mailing list into a form
letter in Word.

I haven't turned on the logging yet nor scanned the .pst file.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I haven't turned on the logging yet nor scanned the .pst file.

Probably worth doing this (and scan any .ost) before trying anything else.

Other stuff I would probably do, although I have no evidence that it
wouls make any difference:
a. ensure the user only has one mail profile (Control Panel|Mail|Show
Profiles)
b. remove and recreate the user's profile from scratch (this should be
relatively easy now that she's on Exchange Server)

Peter Jamieson