[Peter Jamieson]

the system rejects the address

Yes, Russ was correct about this.

Maybe you have sorted out the problem, but AFAICS there are a number of
problems he
1. why does merging using the one-off fax number format (e.g.
[fax:5551234567]) not work? Or does it work, if you wait long enough?
2. What do you actually have to put in your Outlook contacts to make
merging using any number format work? This does not seem to me to be
straightforward.
3. Practically speaking, how would you ensure that the necessary data
is in your contacts, especially if
a. you do not normally keep fax numbers in Outlook contacts, e.g.
you are actually getting a list of fax numbers and other data in your
Excel sheet and/or
b. you have info. in Excel that you do not want to put into Outlook
(or which would be difficult to store without using loads of
user-defined fields or some such)

I had to remind myself of what is going on here and look a little
further, but currently have to test without a fax transport, which
doesn't really help. I'm looking at Office 2007 SP2 on Vista 32-bit.

Also, Word either uses a different set of interfaces when merging to
HTML than when it merges with attachments, or works with MAPI in a
significantly different way. I don't know enough about the behaviour of
the various standard interfaces available to be able to deduce which
interfaces Word is using, but it would be pretty helpful if someone else
knows (I've asked Microsoft in the past and never received a reply).

Another possibility would be to take a completely different approach and
use VBA to perform one merge at a time, outputting to a new document,
then opening that document and sending it using the appropriate one-off
fax number.

But for now, let's assume we are trying to do a traditional merge to
numbers such as 5551234567, with one-off fax number format [fax:5551234567]

On question 1,

What actually happens when you merge using the one-off fax number format
from (say) an Excel data source is that
a. if you merge using HTML format, there are no visible checks against
Outlook contacts and the message goes very quickly to the Sent Items
folder. I haven't actually seen any of them in the Outbox.
b. if you merge using Attachment, the message appears in the Outlook
outbox with the number showing as '5551234567' . As you said.

AFAICS, this is in fact identical to the situation where you send an
individual Word document to email and specify the one-off fax number. In
both cases the number appears as '5551234567'. In both cases, when you
inspect the properties of the '5551234567' they show as:

Display address: 5551234567
Email address: 5551234567
Email type: FAX
Send using Outlook Rich Text format

However, if I wait long enough, the message disappears from the Outbox
and I see an error generated by "The System Administrator" (which is a
local account of some kind, nothing to do with my email provider) that

"Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients."

and

"None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient."

Which is correct as I have no fax transport installed here.

However, I wonder if the message in your outbox is eventually sent to
your fax transport, or whether it is permanently stuck in the outbox?

On question 2,

As Russ said, when you merge to a number such as 5551234567 that is
/not/ in one-off format, it will only work if the number is set up in
Word contacts. If you merge using HTML format, you don't see the
"security" prompts. However, whether you merge using HTML format or
using attachments,
a. you do see prompts to select a contact if the fax number is not in
a contact
b. you will also see a prompt if there is more than one contact with
the same fax number (I think), or where a contact has both an email
address and a fax address: in this case the prompt asks you to select
the specific email address you wan to use
c. as far as I can see, when you merge using HTML, Outlook will find
the contacts whichever contacts folder they are in. However, if you
merge using an attachment, Outlook will not find the contacts with fax
numbers unless they are specifically in the Contacts folder. It is
interesting that when merging to HTML and you see a pop-up address
selection dialog box, and you click the More names... option, folders
other than Contacts are not listed. When you merge to attachment, they are.

So in other words, if merging using the one-off format is not possible,
and you want to merge "as an attachment"
a. you'll have to ensure that the relevant fax addresses are in
contacts in the Contacts folder
b. unless you want to answer additional questions for each contact,
you'll need to ensure that
- all the contacts you want to fax to only have one email address,
namely the fax number
- (possibly) you don't have more than one contact with a given fax number.
c. you have to ensure that the fax number is stored in the email field
(putting it in one or more of the fax number fields may look like a
sensible thing to do but does not help
d. when you insert the fax number into the email field, use the
one-off format [fax:5551234567]. Outlook breaks the field up into an
email type of FAX and an address of 5551234567

FWIW, I do not understand why Outlook cannot resolve a fax number
correctly in the situation where a contact has two "email" addresses,
one of which does not even contain the fax number. I vaguely remember
this problem from a long time ago - and to me it is one of a number of
things that prevents Outlook from being a first class place to store
real-world contact data.

On question 3,
From your original post, I would assume that you would normally get a
list of fax numbers in Excel format and might not want to store them in
Outlook. But it looks as if you will have to, to make the merge work.
But if you have other data in Excel that needs to be in your merged
emails, with the "initiate the merge from Outlook" approach you would
really have to store all the data in Outlook. It seems to me that a
viable approach would be a two-step one where you at least
a. imported all the fax numbers you want to send to into Contacts,
overwriting any existing contacts with the same fax numbers
b. use your Excel data source, knowing that Outlook will find all the
numbers.

If having all these entries would be clutter, then you might want to
delete them all post-merge (since you can't do the obvious thing of
keeping them in a separate contacts folder if you want to merge with
attachments)

I guess all that could be done reasonably easily with some VBA code if
you define a standard that allows you to identify these "one-off"
contacts unambiguously - for example you name each contact
"one-off the number"
e.g.
one-off 5551234567

You can certainly use Outlook's import facility to set up such one-offs,
but you'll need to ensure that you have the following columns and map
them to the correct fields in outlook:

name (to go in the appropriate contact name)
number (to go in the email address)
emailtype (to go in the email type field)

emailtype should always be set to "FAX" (without the quotes)

If you don't map the emailtype, Outlook will always assume you are
creating a normal SMTP type email address.

That's just about all I can manage right now. It is certainly all much
messier than it needs to be!

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

On 02/12/2009 21:41, Joe in AZ wrote:
the system rejects the address

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

What happens if you try merging to email, selecting the attachment
option, but using a faxaddress column that just uses the number
4807527890, not the text [fax:4807527890] ?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

On 01/12/2009 20:46, Joe in AZ wrote:
I have a fax server integrated with our mail system via our PBX. I am
attempting to mail merge a word 2007 document with an Excel 2007 data source
to Outlook 2007. I have a field in Excel "faxaddress" which has the correct
format for a fax number to be accepted by our fax server. The format is
[fax:4801234567]. I can open a new mail message, type in a fax number in this
format and hit send and the fax server collects and sends the message. I can
also open my Word merge document merge to the data source and select the
format type "HTML" and the message will be picked up by the fax server. When
I use HTML as the format, my document gets reformatted and is difficult to
read. If I use the format "attachment", I get an immediate "undeliverable"
notice that says: "' '4807527890' on 12/1/2009 8:57 AM
The message could not be delivered because the recipient's
destination email system is unknown or invalid. Please check the address and
try again, or contact your system administrator to verify connectivity to the
email system of the recipient. "

However, If I go into sent items, open the same message and "send again",
the message gets picked up by the fax server and comes over correctly
formatted. The fax server vendor says the issue is with Microsoft Office and
that Word is reformatting the address somehow when it is submitting it to
Outlook.Has anyone had a similar problem or does anyone have any idea how I
can fix it so that the messages get faxed out succesfully on the first try?

.