Word 2007 Mail Merge

[Martini]

I an using the Office 2007 Small Business Edition Trial and have a problem
using Mail Merge in Word 2007. I create the mailing as normal then chose
'select recipients' then 'select from outlook contacts' then word just shuts
down and nothing happens ! If I then reopen word it asks if I would like to
open the recovered document. Hope someone can help.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I do not know whether it will make a difference in this case, but as a
general rule it is better to start a merge that uses Outlook data by
selecting the contacts in Outlook then using Outlook Tools|Mail Merge...

Peter Jamieson

 

[Bevdotcom]

I am having exactly the same problem using Office 2007 Pro. I have
successfully accomplished sending emailings this way for serveral months and
now - tried to make a new one and this happens. In addition my old saved
documents that did work now fail when I give persmission to use Outlook...
What solution did you find?

 

[Martini]

After the trial period I upgraded to the full Office 2007 Small Business
Edition version and that solved the problem, so I can only assume that the
trial had limited functionality.

 

[Bevdotcom]

Thanks for your reply. Since mine has always been the full version and was
working and then just stopped I guess we didn't have the same cause.

 

[Bevdotcom]

Peter,
I am running Office 2007 and Vista. Have used Word Mail Merge successfully
to send out individual emails to a contact list in Outlook. Have 4 or 5 of
same saved with the link to the Outlook contacts. This week I began to
created new mailout in same manner. Start Word, do mail merge, click on
choose receipents; choose outlook- Word closes - no error msg, nothing.
I've done all the diagnostics and even ran SCANPST to be sure outlook pst
folder was good. Nothing changes. Just seems like it bombs when outlook is
chosen.
Read your idea of using Outlook as starting point instead of Word and in
fact it works. Still bothered though about why Word doesn't all of a sudden.
Perferred Word because it was less steps to accomplish selecting names from
my list. Any ideas.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Read your idea of using Outlook as starting point instead of Word and
in fact it works. Still bothered though about why Word doesn't all
of a sudden. Perferred Word because it was less steps to accomplish
selecting names from my list. Any ideas.

Fewer steps? You select the entries you want to merge in Outlook before you
run the merge then merge all of them. If you use Outlook's filtering it
becomes far more simple to start from Outlook
http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Peter Jamieson]

Personally I think "Initiate from Outlook" is the way to go, but mainly
because the other approach has not been maintained.
If you were used to selecting a contacts folder from Word and could do
everything you wanted that way, it would be few steps than
a. possibly opening Outlook (which not everyne keeps open)
b. or switching to Outlook
c. opening the contacts folder (because you do have to select some
contacts)
d. selecting
e. using Tools|Mail merge... and making sure you've set all the options you
need
f. etc.

In fact, if you could successfully save your regular mail merge main
documents with the correct Contacts folder attached (without going through
that contacts folder selection thing every time) then it would be even
easier, and how most people who primarily work in Word probably actually
want to do merges most of the time. If you mostly work in Outlook, things
would obviously look a lot different.

Just my 2c-worth...

 

[Bevdotcom]

I appreciate both your and Mr. Mayor's comments. The Outlook approach does
currently work for me and I am doomed to use it since the Word approach just
stopped working. I am very happy to have at least one way to do what needs
to be done. You mentioned that "the other approach has not been maintained"
referring to Word I suppose. Could you eloborate? I would like to
understand why Word would have worked perfectly for several months and then
just quit! Could it be that some recent update to Office 2007 or the like
just stepped on the Mail Merge feature?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You mentioned that "the other approach has not been maintained"

referring to Word I suppose. Could you eloborate? I would like to
understand why Word would have worked perfectly for several months and
then
just quit! Could it be that some recent update to Office 2007 or the like
just stepped on the Mail Merge feature?

Lengthy and inconclusive response follows:

If you are not aware of changing anything relevant in Outlook, e.g. if you
have not for some reason marked your contacts folder as /not/ being in the
Outlook Address Book, or renamed the folder - stuff like that - then the
chances are that something has either broken for reasons I do not know, or
something has broken because of an update.

The method where you start from Word uses the Access/Jet OLE DB provider to
get the data. (Well, actually in Office 2007, the Jet datbase engine has
been modified and renamed so it is now called the ACE engine, and the
provider is now the ACE provider).

The Jet/ACE provider can maintain data in the Jet/ACE (.mdb) databases which
are if you like the native database format for Access, but also has addins
called IISAMs provided by Microsoft to get or maintain data in a number of
other formats, e.g. Excel, plain text, and some versions of dBASE. There is
also an IISAM to get data from Outlook and other address book providers.
This is what Word uses.

When I say "it hasn't been maintained", I mean two things:
a. it has never been modified so that it can retrieve all the outlook
contact fields that the "start from outlook" method can retrieve. For
example, it does not retrieve the "categories" fields, and it returns many
of the address fields in a different way and with different names than the
"start from Outlook" approach does
b. I don't get the impression that Microsoft invests any effort into making
this work any "better". For example, even if you use the OLE DB provider
from a VB or VBA program, specifying the contacts folder name you want, it
appears to be impossible to avoid a dialog box that lets the user select the
folder.

I heard (a long time ago) that one of the reasons for (a) might be that it
is actually quite difficult to get this data out of Outlook. I know some of
the reasons why that might be the case but probably not all of them. The
probable reason for (b) and quite possibly also for some of (a) is that
providing access via this route presents an additional "attack surface" for
viruses etc. that want to steal your address data.

This method has always seemed quite fragile - in other words, plenty of
people report the sort of problems you have encountered. Typically it's
easier to refer them to the "start from Outlook" approach because it (a)
seems to be "the future" and better supported, and allows access to more of
the contact data and (b) finding and fixing the cause of things that "just
break" is rarely easy in Windows/Office. You can always try the Office
detect and repair (it's calld something else in Office 2007), for example
but I personally do not like advising people to uninstall/reinstall Office.

As far as I can tell, some reasons why the Jet/ACE OLE DB approach might
fail are:
c. it uses a couple of temporary files - if it can't create them, the
operation will fail
d. the names of the Address book folders and the Contact folders are not
necessarily the same - for example if you select the properties for your
Outlook Contacts folder and look at the Outlook Address Book tab, you will
see that you do not have to specify "Contacts" in there also.
e. further, some of these folder/address book names do not seem to go away
even when you remove the contacts folder they are associated with. I've
never quite worked that one out but think the names must be held
independently somewhere.

If you haven't changed anything in Outlook, then (d) and (e) seem highly
unlikely, but a modification to Windows security might well cause problems
with (c). Here, for example, if I set up Outlook Contacts as my data source
and use VBA to show the data source's name property, connectionstring
property and querystring property I see:

name: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common
Files\SYSTEM\MSMAPI\1033\~~~_virtual_file_~~~Mailbox - Peter Jamieson|

connectstring: Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;User ID=Admin;Data
Source="";Mode=Share Deny None;Extended Properties="Outlook
9.0;MAPILEVEL=Mailbox - Peter
Jamieson|;TABLETYPE=0;DATABASE=C:\Users\PJJ~1.DOM\AppData\Local\Temp\OfficeMMergeTempDir\OLK1C56.tmp;COLSETVERSI

querystring: SELECT * FROM `Contacts`

In other words, Word is apparently trying to use a file in C:\Program Files
(x86)\Common Files\SYSTEM\MSMAPI\1033\ and a file in
C:\Users\PJJ~1.DOM\AppData\Local\Temp\OfficeMMergeTempDir

What if Windows has not allowed the OLE DB provider to create those files
and folders? It could be worth trying to have a look at the equivalent
folders on your system. FWIW in this case I am actually using Word 2007 with
Outlook 2003 on Vista 64-bit (and the connection currently works fine) - I
would expect something similar on Windows XP and with WOrd 2003, but it's
possible that something different happens when you use Word 2007 with
Outlook 2007.

 

[Bevdotcom]

Wow! You guys are under appreciated! Thanks for the time it took to answer
my questions. I will look further on my own system and see what's there.
Also, you have made me a believer in using Outlook.

 

[Heavy Metal Lust Queen]

I am also having this problem!!!

I don't want to do the open from Outlook approach because I have thousands
of contacts in Outlook & the list that I am trying to merge is a typed list
that is not in alphabetical order. So I am having to go up & down through all
my contacts in Outlook & holding the shift key down to make sure each name is
highlighted (God forbid I accidentally miss & unhighlight all the names I've
highlighted & have to start over again).
When I used to do mail merge from Word, I was able to go down the list &
check the box next to the name of the person I wanted to add to my list. To
do it from Outlook is very time consuming. Unless you all know of a way to
just check boxes next to names that I am unaware of?

Is there just no way to fix this problem & do it from Word like we used to?

Thanks!

 

[Bevdotcom]

I hear your frustration. This is irritating, I know. I'm no expert but try
this idea:
Open outlook to your contacts; choose a view that puts the contacts in
alphabetical order (or whatever order will make it easy for you to find the
ones you want); do the mail merge and select ALL contacts.
The next step will get you to Word. Now EDIT RECIEPIENTS.
You'll see the list of names you are accustomed to in Word. Uncheck all of
them and then just find the ones you want and check them. No iffy
highlighting.
I think you can then save the chosen list somehow but I haven't worked that
all the way thru - this is just quick and dirty.
Hope it helps

 

[Heavy Metal Lust Queen]

That'll work! Thanks so much!

I hear your frustration. This is irritating, I know. I'm no expert but try
this idea:
Open outlook to your contacts; choose a view that puts the contacts in
alphabetical order (or whatever order will make it easy for you to find the
ones you want); do the mail merge and select ALL contacts.
The next step will get you to Word. Now EDIT RECIEPIENTS.
You'll see the list of names you are accustomed to in Word. Uncheck all of
them and then just find the ones you want and check them. No iffy
highlighting.
I think you can then save the chosen list somehow but I haven't worked that
all the way thru - this is just quick and dirty.
Hope it helps

 

[OC-Newbie]

Just to support you in your frustration, exact same problem running XP with
Office Pro 2007 and have added Outlook 07 with Business Contact Manager.

It's supposed to to easy ? This is my first go with Outlook and BCM and was
getting extremely frustrated before reading you have the same problems. How
is ACT or Prophet standing up?

Thanks for any advice...