Outlook address book merge into Word XP

[Jay]

Many of the Outlook address book fields aren't recognized
in the Word XP merge. For example, Courtesy_Title,
Generation, Job Title and Postal Address. Microsoft
Knowledge Base Article #197716 deals with Word and
Outlook 2000, and doesn't work with Word/Outlook XP. It
would seem that Microsoft has had enough time to get this
function right. Any ideas on how to proceed?

Jay

 

[Peter Jamieson]

In Office 2002 there are in fact now at /three/ (or more, depending on what
you are counting) ways to use Outlook address data as the data source for a
merge, and unfortunately each of them provides a different set of fields:
a. the way offered in the Word 2002 mailmerge wizard. This is new, uses an
Outlook OLEDB provider and Jet to get the data.
b. export from Outlook (which is the "solution" offered in 197716 as fr as
I can see). However, a special version of "Export from Outlook" is available
if you select a contacts folder in Outlook and use Outlook Tools|Mail merge
to initiate the merge. This was also available in Office 2000. This is
probably the best way to go, although it is a shame that the idea that you
are doing the merge from within Word is undermined.
c. the old method. This is only obviously available in the User Interface
if you re-enable the old MailMergeHelper using Tools|Customize. This method
uses a Word text converter. If you create a completely empty file called
e.g. x.olk and use it as your data source, Word should invoke this converter
and you should see the same results you had in Word 2000.