The two features are not compatible as you have found out.

The only way that you can achieve what you are after is to roll your own
alternative to mailmerge using Visual Basic

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Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Beth" wrote in message
...
Hi there -
I'm trying to incorporate two aspects into one document: mail merge and
form
fields. It seems that no matter what I try, I can only have one of the
two
functioning properly at the same time. I can only have mail merge working
but not the form fields because I haven't protected them OR the form
fields
working but not the mail merge because the document is protected.

I have tried setting up two sections within the same document so that the
mail merge is section 1 and the form portion is section 2 and only
protecting
the section 2 data but it still doesn't want to work for me. Any
suggestions?