In the 2000 version, you could gather contacts into a virtual file and query
for the names all day from that same virtual file rather quickly. Now I am
on the Office Professional 2003 version with Outlook 2003 and it takes
forever to download the contacts each time and search for someone else to
send to. I use the templates on a group server for many proposal types with
unique phrasing, I cannot access them from within Outlook to do a single
letter at a time as I had done in the past.

See the Code Methods at http://www.slipstick.com/contacts/startletter.htm

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

"BNethery" wrote in message
...
In the 2000 version, you could gather contacts into a virtual file and
query
for the names all day from that same virtual file rather quickly. Now I
am
on the Office Professional 2003 version with Outlook 2003 and it takes
forever to download the contacts each time and search for someone else to
send to. I use the templates on a group server for many proposal types
with
unique phrasing, I cannot access them from within Outlook to do a single
letter at a time as I had done in the past.

You actually can still use the old converter - see
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_lab...th_word_xp.htm though merging
from Outlook is preferable http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm

The first link reports an error with Word 2003 if you access the converter.
It is possible to get round this, but I have forgotten what the error
message is, so I can't look up the reference.

For individual letters and envelopes I would use the macros at
http://www.gmayor.com/Macrobutton.htm to call the data from Outlook into the
letter template. They don't have to be attached to macrobutton fields.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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




BNethery wrote:
In the 2000 version, you could gather contacts into a virtual file
and query for the names all day from that same virtual file rather
quickly. Now I am on the Office Professional 2003 version with
Outlook 2003 and it takes forever to download the contacts each time
and search for someone else to send to. I use the templates on a
group server for many proposal types with unique phrasing, I cannot
access them from within Outlook to do a single letter at a time as I
had done in the past.