Unpredictable display of graphics in emailed MailMerge docs

[Margaret Bartley]

I'm emailing a MailMerge document (Word 2003) through Outlook (Outlook 2003),
Win XP

Sometimes, everything looks fine. But sometimes, the text is misplaced.
When I open the copy that I sent to myself, it looks OK, but when I look at
the email that was put in the Sent folder of Outlook, it is garbled.

Then I will get an email from one of my recipients that says the email looks
like the garbled version. Others will say that the email looked fine. They
are all in the same MailMerge session, with the same Word document.

The Word document has a table with two columns. The first cell in a row has
a graphic, the second cell in the row has the text. The garbling that
sometimes happens is that the text in one of the rows of the table will be
placed above the table; the graphic in that first cell will be OK, but the
cell will have some, but not all, of the text missing - it was placed in the
paragraph before the table.

Here's a brief illustration:
Correct:

Table introduction paragraph
----------------------------------
| Graphic1 Title 1 |
| Text 1 here |
| Graphic2 Title 2 |
| Text 2 here |
| Graphic3 Title 3 title |
| Text 3 here |
----------------------------------

Inorrect:

Table introduction paragraph
Text 2 here
----------------------------------
| Graphic1 Title 1 |
| Text 1 here |
| Graphic2 Title 2 |
| |
| Graphic3 Title 3 title |
| Text 3 here |
-----------------------------------

It's not clear what I've done differently between the rows that display
properly, and the rows where the text is not in the table, but before the
table. It takes me many hours to do this document, with lots of cutting and
pasting, changing graphics, reformatting, etc. I do not resize the graphics.
I usually format the graphics to be behind the text, so that they will fit
snuggly in the cell, but sometimes I make the row a single cell, and align
the graphic square with the text.

Any ideas about what is getting kattiwampus here?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

To be certain of the way in which a mail recipient sees a document, it
should be sent in .pdf format as an attachment.

See the "Individual Merge Letters" item on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's website
at:

http://www.gmayor.com/individual_merge_letters.htm

As you are using Word 2003, the "Add-in to Merge Letters to Separate Files"
that I have written and that can be downloaded from that site will allow you
to create each letter as a separate file with a filename taken from a field
in the data source in .pdf format with a minimum of fuss.

Then See the article "Mail Merge to E-mail with Attachments" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/MergeWithAttachments.htm

for how to send each individual attachment.
--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP