Mail merge to email - Word 2003 and 2007 - locking graphics

[cathyall]

I have read though numerous posts on this - thank Doug Robbins -
but my situation is:
1. I need to do a mail merge from a filtered view in Outlook.
2. I want to provide links to my website - rather than including
attachments - my ISP has issues with the size of emails sent with
attachments, and I also want to drive traffic to my website - rahter
than sending an attchemtn, I want to send people to the relevant link
on my website. I can do this easily within a standard mail merge.
3. I want to include grpahics in my Word document I use to mail
merge. I understnad that not all recipients will be able to view the
email as it was intended if they have it set to plain text format, or
if they are not using Outlook. However, ALL of my recipients are
using Outlook, and 95% receive as html format.

My problem is:
I generate my email from Outlook, through a mail merge into a Word
document. I line the graphics up exactly as I wish them to appear in
the sent email. But they lose their positioning. It is almost as if
I have to "lock" the graphics into position? If so, how do I do this?
I am great with Outlook and mail merge, but Word's graphics and I just
agree to disagree. I have spent soooo many hours trying to resolve
this - would really love some help - TIA
Cathy Allington

 

[Graham Mayor]

See http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm
The issue with graphics and word documents vis a vis e-mail is that Word
documents and html e-mails have different formatting requirements. If you
prepare the document in web view then you should be able to see how the
document is laid out. See http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk/t0002.htm if you have any
problems actually running the merge.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[cathyall]

Thank you very much for this Graham - so the simple answer is that you
need to save the Word document as a web page, and test the layout
first? I've been playing around with this, and whilst much closer,
still has some issue with graphics not being in the right place, for
some recipients. (Only tested with 4, all of whom have Outlook set to
receive as html.) Any more excellent thoughts on this?

Also, it was placing the graphics also as attachments within the sent
emails - do you know how I stop this happening?

Many Thanks in anticipation
Cathy Allington