[peterk]

I would value some help on mailmerge issues in Word 2007, which our office
has recently upgraded to.

We are a Christian aid organisation. One admin job is to send out regular
receipts to donors. We have several merge letters each linked to a text
file. We are used to Word 97 where the merge file is saved with the link,
and for each batch the text file is overwritten with newly exported data. So
the merged file can be created in 2 clicks - Open and Merge.

In Word 2007, we have worked out how to open and merge the letter, but it
takes much longer, because we don't know how to save the link to the data
file. This means every time we open the letter, we have to recreate all the
merge settings from scratch.

Is this correct, or are we missing something obvious?

[Graham Mayor]

See http://www.gmayor.com/merge_labels_with_word_2007.htm which covers the
merge process in Word 2007.
If you put the data file in the My Data Sources folder or in the same folder
as the merge document, the document should be able to find its data source
next time.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



peterk wrote:
I would value some help on mailmerge issues in Word 2007, which our
office has recently upgraded to.

We are a Christian aid organisation. One admin job is to send out
regular receipts to donors. We have several merge letters each
linked to a text file. We are used to Word 97 where the merge file
is saved with the link, and for each batch the text file is
overwritten with newly exported data. So the merged file can be
created in 2 clicks - Open and Merge.

In Word 2007, we have worked out how to open and merge the letter,
but it takes much longer, because we don't know how to save the link
to the data file. This means every time we open the letter, we have
to recreate all the merge settings from scratch.

Is this correct, or are we missing something obvious?

[Peter Jamieson]

If you put the data file in the My Data Sources folder or in the same
folder
as the merge document, the document should be able to find its data
source
next time.

Some of this seems to depend on the type of data source, e.g. if the
data source is not where the document "thinks" it is,
a. if it's a .csv, Word will find it in My Data Sources or the same
folder as the document (all other things being equal)
b. if it's a .txt, Word will find it in the same folder as the
document (all other things being equal), but not in My Data Sources

(This is with Vista + Word 2007)

Although the difference in behaviour between (a) and (b) seems slightly
odd, that's nothing new when it comes to mailmerge. Perhaps more
predictable is that...

c. if it's (say) a .xlsx, Word won't find it in either place. In that
case Word may prompt with the OLE DB datalink dialog box before it has
even popped up its slightly more informative "can't find the data
source" dialog box. OK, so .xlsx is less likely in the case where a
program is exporting data form a database for merge. But if you happened
to have "Confirm file format conversion on open" switched on when you
connected to a .txt, and selected the OLE DB database option (typically
the only one on offer in Word 2007), you get the same problem.

If the mail merge main document and the data source are in the same
folder, but that's a network folder, I suspect a rather different set of
rules comes into play.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

On 18/11/2009 07:53, Graham Mayor wrote:
See http://www.gmayor.com/merge_labels_with_word_2007.htm which covers the
merge process in Word 2007.
If you put the data file in the My Data Sources folder or in the same folder
as the merge document, the document should be able to find its data source
next time.