Saving a merge letter changes previous letters

[Raven]

I have Word 2003, as we just migrated to WinXP. I have a form letter with
merge fields as a template. When I try to use the mail merge wizard and edit
to add a new recipient and save the letter, it looks ok. If I then close the
letter after I've "saved as" and look at it again, the personalized info is
gone, and they all look like the first one I typed. The other secretary said
to edit the data source directly, but it's doing the same thing. What is
this doing? I don't have time to re-write letters again and again because it
won't save what I just bloody typed!

 

[Charles Kenyon]

If you actually merge the letter to a document, it will save what you typed.
You are doing what I do, merging to a screen preview which can be printed.
This still has live fields.

What I've done is add two buttons to my merge toolbar to lock and unlock
fields. These trigger the following two macros:

Sub FieldsLockAllStory()
' All Story Field Locker
' Written by Charles Kyle Kenyon 9 December 2004
' repaired with help from Jezebel 10 December 2004
Dim oStory As Range
On Error Resume Next
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
Do
oStory.Fields.Locked = True
Set oStory = oStory.Next
Loop Until oStory Is Nothing
Next
End Sub
Sub FieldsUnLockAllStory()
' All Story Field Unlocker
' Written by Charles Kyle Kenyon 9 December 2004
' repaired with help from Jezebel 10 December 2004
Dim oStory As Range
On Error Resume Next
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
Do
oStory.Fields.Locked = False
Set oStory = oStory.Next
Loop Until oStory Is Nothing
Next
End Sub

I use a modified version of the padlock button from the forms toolbar for
these (changed color on both and open lock on the one to unlock).

Note if you have a Page X of Y in your header/footer, you'll want to
manually unlock that field or it will be wrong.

Otherwise, you can print as a pdf file.

 

[Raven]

How would I be able to tell? and why would it change the letter *after* I
saved it? I also have no idea what you're talking about with unlocking and
writing macros.
Meg

 

[Charles Kenyon]

A merge is made up of a primary merge document with fixed text and merge
fields combined with a data source. Each record in the data source will put
different things in the fields. Word knows or remembers that you are working
with the 17th record, which happens to be James Smith. You save it. You
change your data source by adding or deleting records and now the 17th
record is Mary Parsons. When you reopen your letter with unlocked fields, it
will fill in the blanks with information about Mary Parsons.

If you select your entire document (Ctrl-A) and lock the fields in it
(Ctrl-3) before saving it, they won't change when you reopen it later. A
macro makes it easier if you are going to be doing it a lot or if you have
fields in headers or footers.

Otherwise, if you simply actually perform a merge to a document, that result
would also be fixed.