Trying to Mail Merge with word and Excel

[Spencer_Jacobs]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Help I have recently bought my first Mac and I am trying to mail merge using a word letter and a database set up in Excel. It asks me to convert the excel doc which I click yes and then after a few minutes crashes and throws me out of word. I have moved these docs from a windows machine which worked find. Help please

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I do not know what is wrong, but
a. if you are in a hurry to do the merge and the Excel sheet does not have
more columns than are allowed in a Word table (it's 64 or some such), I
would consider
- selecting the worksheet
- copy & paste into Word
- try using that document as your data source.

Otherwise
a. if you have not done it already, I would make sure you open both the
Word doc and the Excel workbook, make a small change, and save again on
Mac. hen try again.
b. If that makes no diffeence, if the Excel sheet is simple (e.g. just
data, not formulas) I would consider saving it in a different format, e.g.
..csv. Then re-open that .csv and save it as a .xls or .xlsx
c. If that makes no difference, I'd consider making a copy of the Excel
file, reducing it to a single row of data, and see if that works OK, then
(probably re-introduce deleted rows to see if the problem seems to be
related to the volume of data in the sheet or perhaps a specific row.

 

[CyberTaz]

Additional to Peter's suggestions, make sure you have both Office (12.1.3) &
OS X (10.5.5) fully updated. Repairing disk permissions wouldn't hurt, then
shut down the Mac for a few minutes & see if things improve on startup.

Also, can you open the data file directly with Excel? If not it may be that
one or more sheets have been renamed using illegal characters (such as "/").
Should that be the case you'll have to open that file in a PC version of
Excel & edit the sheet names.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac