Mail Merge Recipient List

[Jim Laumann]

I successfully created a mail merge in Word 2003 and the 'EDIT' button in the
MAIL MERGE RECIPIENTS dialog box allowed me to edit and customize the fields.
I then opened the Address List file with the mdb extension in Access 2003.
Now I can no longer use the EDIT button to add recipients.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. Jim

 

[Graham Mayor]

There does not appear to be anything in the editing of the data file in
Access that would prevent the file from being used with Word's merge tools.
Did you re-attach the data after editing it in Access?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Jim Laumann]

Graham,

Thank you for the reply. Yes, I did re-attach. After an hour or so of
different solutions, I found that I had changed a field name in Access. Even
though, the corresponding Word field was also corrected, the database
apparently corrupted. I checked the field properties in Access to see if
something else was affected. No luck. Once I recreated the Recipient List
in Word using the "exact" field names (over 40 fields) in the document and
reattached, the problem was solved.

It is important to be able to open the Access File since the client (Law
Firm) will be importing records from a previous merge file that was used with
WordPerfect into the new Access database.

Again, your reply was appreciated.

Jim

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Word treats Office Address Lists (OALs) differently from other .mdb files,
e.g. in that it lets you edit them from within Word. Word is quite finickity
when it decides whether a .mdb is an OAL or not. There has to be a table
with a specific name, a query with a specific name, and specific fields (I'd
tell you the precise specification if only I knew what it was). For example,
add one or two more tables in the .mdb and Word will not recognise it as an
OAL.

Peter Jamieson