[Janine Hergesell]

I send out email blasts through an e-mail merge in Word 2007 (using an Excel
sheet as data source).

Recipients are getting my message with two mysterious attachments (which are
confusing recipients and getting the message blocked/caught by spam filters):

themedata.thmx
colorschememapping.xml

(If you open them, one is a bunch of code and the other is a blank
Powerpoint slide.)

In Outlook (at least in 2007, I don't know about other versions), recipient
sees a mysterious paperclip icon....but no attachments, and nothing happens
when you click on the paperclip.

I've seen people write on message boards on the Web that these files are
created by Word 2007 "for round-trip purposes (i.e. when a file is going to
be converted from one format to another and then back again into the original
format.)"

But no one knows how to remove them or prevent them from being attached to
the messages we send.

Even more mysterious is that the problem only happens sometimes, and I'm
trying to determine why. I've tried:

--first creating the document in Notepad
--saving the document as a Word 2003 doc
--using the default "Normal" style
--changing the style to "No spacing"
-- under "Styles" clicking on "clear all formatting"
--not including bullets or numbered lists or merged data fields
--under "Word Options" unchecking the "embed linguistics/embed smart tags"
(I don't know what these are, but I'm trying everything...)
--sending through two different Outlook accounts

Any help is appreciated!
--Janine Hergesell

[Peter Jamieson]

Well, this isn't a solution and I'm not sure I can help you get any further,
but perhaps the following info/questions will help.

These attachments

themedata.thmx
colorschememapping.xml

are created when you save a Word 2007 file in HTML format. If your document
is called mydoc, typically, Word saves a mydoc.htm file, and a folder called
mydoc_files that contains a manifest called filelist.xml,
colorschememapping.xml, and themedata.thmx.

They are not really there for round-tripping except in the sense that you
have to have supporting files when saving as HTML if you want to save stuff
such as .jpg files that cannot be embedded in a .htm file (you can obviously
save in single-file .mht format but it's non-standard outside Microsoft).
i.e. if you want to round-trip .jpgs, you have to have multiple files. Other
round-trip Word-specific information is in the main .htm.

When Word merges to HTML format, it does save the mail merge main document
as an HTML document, then Word (or some other part of Office) constructs a
MIME format message that contains any encoded .jpg files etc as MIME parts.
However, I do not know where to find the files it saves when it does this
(perhaps they survive for a while in a temp folder) and whenever I have done
a merge to email, I've never seen those files attached, so the question is
how your document or configuration differs from mine. There are options in
Word to change the default save format, to change the way the supporting
files are organised when you save as HTML (e.g. either in a supporting
folder or not in a supporting folder), but so far, nothing I have tried
affects this behaviour.

I wonder if you could...
a. say a bit more about the format you are saving your mail merge main
document in (HTML or .DOCX)
b. say a bit more about the type of content in your mail merge main
document - e.g. is it plain text, or does it contain graphics (what types of
graphic?), or other types of object.
c. clarify this:

Even more mysterious is that the problem only happens sometimes

Do you mean that it only happens on some PCs, or that even on the same PC
with the same user profile etc., it happens sometimes and not other times?
In a single merge operation, do all the emails behave the same way, or only
some?

Also, do your emails go out via an Exchange Server or directly via e.g.
SMTP?

--
Peter Jamieson
http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

"Janine Hergesell" wrote in
message ...
I send out email blasts through an e-mail merge in Word 2007 (using an
Excel
sheet as data source).

Recipients are getting my message with two mysterious attachments (which
are
confusing recipients and getting the message blocked/caught by spam
filters):

themedata.thmx
colorschememapping.xml

(If you open them, one is a bunch of code and the other is a blank
Powerpoint slide.)

In Outlook (at least in 2007, I don't know about other versions),
recipient
sees a mysterious paperclip icon....but no attachments, and nothing
happens
when you click on the paperclip.

I've seen people write on message boards on the Web that these files are
created by Word 2007 "for round-trip purposes (i.e. when a file is going
to
be converted from one format to another and then back again into the
original
format.)"

But no one knows how to remove them or prevent them from being attached to
the messages we send.

Even more mysterious is that the problem only happens sometimes, and I'm
trying to determine why. I've tried:

--first creating the document in Notepad
--saving the document as a Word 2003 doc
--using the default "Normal" style
--changing the style to "No spacing"
-- under "Styles" clicking on "clear all formatting"
--not including bullets or numbered lists or merged data fields
--under "Word Options" unchecking the "embed linguistics/embed smart tags"
(I don't know what these are, but I'm trying everything...)
--sending through two different Outlook accounts

Any help is appreciated!
--Janine Hergesell