It doesn't look as if anyone here knows the answer to this.

My suspicion is that you can't do it, but there are two main possible
reasons why that might be so and I don't know which is correct:
a. you can't do it however you send your e-mails (i.e. if you create an
HTML document with an 8in wide table and send it, you cannot guarantee 8in
display width because the recipient's client software does what it wants)
b. you can't do it because Word's table and cell width rules are complex,
possibly affected by the merge process, and you simply can't get a fixed 8in
wide table as a result.

I tried a few experiments but realised I was getting lost in Word's table
settings. If you already know that (a) is incorrect 9, i.e. that you /can/
send an 8in wide table and have it honoured by the recipient's mail reader,
and the problem is definitely (b), then it may be worth posting in a more
general group about how to achieve that 8in wide table.

However, if you're not sure about (a) I think you should do some experiments
with plain HTML, if possible. If you can't do it with plain HTML, nothing
Word generates will help.

One thing to bear in mind is that when Word merges to e-mail, it uses its
own idiosyncratic HTML.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Peter Jamieson

I would suggest that you download the add-in from:

http://www.gmayor.com/individual_merge_letters.htm

and use it to create individual files for each merged letter.  Then
See the article "Mail Merge to E-mail with Attachments" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/MergeWithAttachments.htm

and send the documents as attachments.