There are a number of separate issues here
First of all, if you merge to e-mail sending a hyperlink of any kind, the
recipient does nto necessarily see a clickable hyperlink. It depends on the
mail format that you specify (HTML, plain text, attachment) and the
capabilities and options in the recipient's e-mail client.
For example, if you merge to plain text via Word 2003/OL2003, as far as I
can see if you
also use OL2003 to receive/view the e-mail, it does not display a clickable
link no matter what you do in Word, despite the fact that in this scenario,
OL2003 thinks it has received an HTML format e-mail (and as far as I can
tell, actually sends an HTML format e-mail unless you happen to open the
plain text e-mail in the out basket before it is sent).
So you have to use HTML format, and you don't get much control over the end
result when you do that from Word.
You also have to consider what the user at the othe end is going to do with
a link that says "Click here" these days.
If the clickable link is to the /same/ target every time, AFAIK all you do
is insert a Word HYPERLINK in your mail merge main document with the correct
link, then modify the display text. Then merge to HTML. I think.
If the link is to a different target then as far as I know there is no
simple option other than the "Use VBA and Word Events" that I have described
elsewhere in this conversation. It's actually not that hard to do if you are
willing to step through the example.
--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk
"chris" wrote in message
...
Thanks for that...but it is a bit above me and want to ask a simple
question:
I am trying to send an Outlook 03 email using Word 03 to merge info from
an
Excel 03 datasource which includes a couple of URL fields and have it say
"Click Here" (hiding the full URL using a href=" URL" Click Here/A )
But it doesn't hide the URL and make "Click Here" hot....
Any Ideas?
"Peter Jamieson" wrote:
Also, Jay Freedman posted this link to some simpler VBA..
http://groups.google.com/group/micro....public.word.*
--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk
"Peter Jamieson" wrote in message
...
The only way I know is to use VBA to modify the display text, either
during the merge or as a post-merge operation.
I only have the following code for doing it during the merge, and I
haven't tested this code for some time. To see it working
1. Create a new document, connect it to your data source, and insert
one
merge field and a bookmark named "mybm"
2. Open up the VBA Editor and
a. insert a class module.
b. name it EventClassModule in the properties box
c. Copy the following code into the module:
Public WithEvents App As Word.Application
Private Sub App_MailMergeBeforeRecordMerge(BYVal Doc As Document,
Cancel
As
Boolean)
Dim dt as String
Dim lt as String
Dim h as Hyperlink
Dim r as Range
' set the range variable to our placeholder bookmark
Set r = Doc.Bookmarks("mybm").Range
' delete any existing text (this is needed for records after record 1)
r.Text = ""
' construct the link text that you want. I'm assuming your data source
' has fields called idfield and namefield.
lt = http://www.testsite.com?id= & _
Doc.MailMerge.DataSource.DataFields("idfield") & _
"&name=" & _
Doc.MailMerge.DataSource.DataFields("namefield")
' set up the display text that you want. If it should be the same
' as the link text, do that:
dt = lt
' insert the hyperlink you want
Set h = Doc.Hyperlinks.Add(Anchor:=r, Address=lt, TextToDisplay:=dt)
' Set mybm to "cover" the inserted link so it is easy to delete the old
hyperlink
Doc.Bookmarks.Add Name:="mybm", Range:=h.Range
Set r = Nothing
Set h = Nothing
End Sub
3. Insert an ordinary module (the name does not matter) and insert the
following code:
Dim x As New EventClassModule
Sub autoopen()
Set x.App = Word.Application
End Sub
4. Save and close the document. Open it to trigger the autoopen, then
perform a test merge.
NB, if you start changing the code you may find that you need to re-run
your
autoopen code again, and/or save/close/open the document.
--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk
"FUBARinSFO" wrote in message
...
Hi:
Merging fields from an Excel 2003 data source to Word 2003 document,
you can create active links (hyperlinks) into the merged document, but
evidently can't set the display text of the link -- the link displays
as itself. This is especially ugly if the path is a network mapped
drive.
Thus, with the ugly URL below, there's no evident way to dress it up
with 'text to display' separate from the URL itself, as far as I've
been able to determine.
If anybody has found a way to do this, it would be very helpful.
-- Roy Zider
Source URL (SrcURL field):
G:\\ABC Email\\Exported\\JLB 2008-06-24\\Chron - extracted\\ABC
Estate_ Contact information.eml
Field codes in merge template:
{HYPERLINK "{MERGEFIELD "SrcURL"}"\@ MERGEFORMAT }
Active link in merged document:
\\k7n\g\ABC Email\Exported\JLB 2008-06-24\Chron - extracted\ABC
Estate_ Contact information.eml
Also annoying is the fact that even if the Excel source document has
active hyperlinks in a field, the merge of this field will transfer
only as text, not as an active hyperlink. So a separate field in
Excel has to be created with the path and file name with double \\ to
generate the \ separators, and use that as the source rather than the
hyperlink itself.
References:
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindy...r/MergFram.htm
http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm