I haven't looked at this properly for a while, but at one time you could use
a nested
mergefield like the following to change the behaviour of images:

{ QUOTE { INCLUDEPICTURE http://www.mysite.com/myimage.jpg
\*MERGEFORMATINET \d } }

All the {} need to be the special field braces you can insert using ctrl-F9.
That may work if you just want to send a link to a single image (i.e. all
the e-mails link to the same image). If you need each e-mail to link to a
different image, you /may/ be able to replace the URL by a mergefield
containing the URL, e.g.

{ QUOTE { INCLUDEPICTURE "{ MERGEFIELD picureURL }"
\*MERGEFORMATINET \d } }

You may also have to uncheck Word Tools|Options|General|Web
Options|Files|Update links on save.

When sending stuff by e-mail it's as well to bear in mind that not every
recipient's e-mail client works the same way. e.g., I still sometimes use a
client that only understands plain text and will not resolve URLs. As far as
Word is concerned, I don't think the Word/Outlook combination makes this
kind of stuff particularly easy to control. I expect there are third party
tools out there but I don't know anything about them.

Peter Jamieson

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi, all,

I don't have much experience with mail merge in Word. What I want to do
is like a template for a Newsletter with some part to be constant
(header and some pictures from an URL), and the rest to be editable.
I've made a basic document with the field {INCLUDEPICTURE 'my URL' \d
\* MERGEFORMAT } which shows the picture with Alt-F9, and I have
unchecked the option "Update links on save" in the
Tools-Options-GeneralWeb Options-Files, as suggested in other
posts. When I save the file as Web page filtered, the html code shows
the url link; but when I email the document with the Mail Merge wizard,
the picture appears embedded and the url link is not there. Is there a
way to fix this?... I

Is Word a good choice to do this? Can someone point me in the right
direction? In case it's necessary, I have some experience programming
VBA in other Office applications, and a little bit in Word. I won't be
the one editing and emailing the document, so I want it to be the
easiest possible for the user.

Thank you in advance for any idea.

Gaby