To be able to do a merge the way you are doing it, you may have to ensure
that the versions of Outlook and Word match, yes (at least one other feature
that requires cooperation between Word and Outlook is also unavailable if
the versions differ). That does not necessarily mean that you cannot do a
mail merge at all. But there are two ways in which Word potentially
interacts with Outlook during a merge:
a. it can use Outlook as a data source, in particular as a source of e-mail
addresses if you are trying to merge to -mail
b. it can use Outlook to send resulting e-mails.
I would guess that (b) would still work, even with mismatched versions. The
problem is more likely to be (a), because initiating the merge from the
Outlook Tools|Mail merge option, which is the /only/ reasonably simple way
to do certain kinds of merge (i.e. most other methods of getting Outlook
data place substantial restrictions on the contact fields available to you).
There are several ways to get contact data, including:
c. the Tools|Mail merge option
d. use the Word Mail Merge Helper (since you're using Word 2000) to specify
an address list as the source. That may or may not work, but you will
certainly see a substantially reduced list of fields compared to (c).
e. create a complete empty file with the extension .olk, then use that as
the data source. The file is essentially a "dummy" that allows Word to get
data from the real source. Underneath, this is essentially the same approach
as (d) and suffers from its problems and shortcomings.
f. use Outlook File|Export to export contact data into a comma-delimited
format, then use it as a data source for a merge. I suspect that probably
will not work well for you.
g. create your own Outlook VBA macros for exporting data from contact
folders into a format that can be used for a merge. There may be some macros
at
www.slipstick.com to help you do that.
--
Peter Jamieson
debbyh said:
When I try to use this feature from outlook, I get the following error
message: "To use this feature, you must install the version of word that
matches the installed version of outlook." To be able to do a mail merge,
must I now upgrade to word 2002 or above? Thanks.
