Mailmerge toolbar does not display automatically

[grahambread]

I recently "upgraded" from Office 2000 to Office 2003. Previously the
mailmerge (MM) toolbar would automatically display when opening a MM
document and cancel itself when closing the document. I have one
document where the toolbar does behave as previously but all others
(old and new) do not have auto display of the toolbar when opening. Can
anyone explain what is happening with this one document and how can I
get all MM documents to behave this way?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Auto display is certainly not the norm in Word 2002/2003.

What may have happened with your one document where autodisplay still occurs
is that it may be attached to a template that has the mail merge toolbar
displayed, or something along those lines (I haven't checked, but it doesn't
seem an unreasonable hypothesis)

FWIW, these days, I tend to leave the MM toolbar on all the time despite the
loss of a bit of "screen real estate"

Peter Jamieson

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Grahambread,

how can I
get all MM documents to behave this way?

It is possible with a macro. A bit of sample codes is
posted in the Word 2002/2003 section of my website.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[grahambread]

Hi Peter and Cindy

Thanks for your input. I think I have now solved the problem and offer
this to all who may be interested.

The essential tool to make this work seems to be the 'Mail Merge
Helper' (MMH) dialogue, which doesn't get used by default in Word2003.
In short if you use this tool to create a new or modify an existing MM
document it will subsequently display the MM toolbar when opening the
doc and remove it when closing.

What I have now done is to install the MMH button on my standard
toolbar. You can find it in Tools/Customize/Commands/All Commands/. The
button remains 'active' even if the current doc is not MM. Open a new
blank document and click on the MMH button to get the dialogue to
create a MM document (as we used to in Word 2000). Once you have linked
to your data source the MM toolbar will behave in the 'old' way. This
has worked for me with new docs and with old ones that previously had
not automatically displayed the toolbar in Word2003 but will do once I
reconnect to the data sorce using the MMH dialogue and then save the
doc.

Best wishes
Graham