Mail Merge not sending emails from word to outlook?

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Tom - 09 Mar 2007 16:06 GMT

I have office 2003 and have done a mail merge in word which seems to be
working fine and there are no errors when using the error checker. I then
click to do the mail merge and nothing happens. Outlook dosn't get the emails
in its outbox (I have turned on the send emails staright away and they are
not in the sent items folder either + I have only selected my own email
address in my testing and i haven't recived the emails either). I have tried
closing outlook and then doing the mail merge and outlook appears as if its
opening on the task bar (it appears 2 times which makes sense as in my tests
i am merging only 2 names and email address). Can anyone help?

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Peter Jamieson - 09 Mar 2007 17:10 GMT

"Disappearing emails" is occasionally reported but there seems to be no
single obvious reason for it, so if you do discover the reason in your case
it would be helpful if you could post back. Some things to look at and/or
try:
a. is Outlook the default Mail program (IE Tools|Internet Options|programs)
?
b. Check Outlook Tools|Options|Other|"Advanced options"|"Enable mail
logging (troubleshooting)". Then restart.
c. if you have a COM Addin called bxAutoZip (see Outlook
Tools|Options|Other|"Advanced Options"|"COM Addins") disable it temporarily.
(If you have other addins and disabling them will do no harm, I'd do that
too).
d. make sure you know where your .pst file is, make a backup copy, and run
the SCANPST.EXE utility - on my system it's in

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033 )
e. ensure you only have one mail profile (Control Panel|Mail|Show
Profiles)
f. recreate your Outlook profile (I don't have a good set of instructions
for that right now)

Some questions:
g. could this problem be related to a specific update? (i.e. did it ever
work, and if so, when did it stop working?)
h. what kind of merge are you doing (HTML, plain text, attachment)?

Peter Jamieson

>I have office 2003 and have done a mail merge in word which seems to be
> working fine and there are no errors when using the error checker. I then
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> tests
> i am merging only 2 names and email address). Can anyone help?

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Tom - 09 Mar 2007 18:02 GMT

Peter Thank you for all the suggestions.

Suggestion h. shed some light on the problem. I was trying to merge in HTML
format and so I tried it in Plain text format and it worked fine, the emails
went to outlook and were sent fine. So it must be something to do with HTML
in outlook?

So I checked outlook under Tools->options->Mail Format (Tab)

"compose in this message format" is set to HTML

Now I can't understand why mail merge only works for plain text and not HTML.

It seems very silly that MS dosn't check that the email got to outlook and
then if it didn't, tell the user why on earth not instead of just vanishing
the email!

Any more suggestions would be great as i will need the HTML format for the
mail merge I have been trying to do.

Thanks alot

Tom

> "Disappearing emails" is occasionally reported but there seems to be no
> single obvious reason for it, so if you do discover the reason in your case
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
> > tests
> > i am merging only 2 names and email address). Can anyone help?

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Peter Jamieson - 09 Mar 2007 18:23 GMT

> Now I can't understand why mail merge only works for plain text and not
> HTML.

That's interesting. Word uses a different interface when it merges to e-mail
(it's some Mail API (MAPI) interface whose name I forget), and only Outlook
seems to implement it. So I'm wondering if the problem could be that for
some reason that interface has not been properly registered or some such.

What I might do - it's just an idea, not anything I've tested or
researched - is
a. close Outlook
b. look at this again...

>> a. is Outlook the default Mail program (IE Tools|Internet
>> Options|programs)
>> ?

and if you have a choice of Outlook and Outlook Express, just try changing
the default Mail program to Outlook Express.
c. if possible, open Outlook Express and use it to send an email, then
close it. However, since you typically have to set up an account, that can
be a slog
d. change the default Mail program back to Outlook.

See if that makes any difference.

Are you using Outlook standalone (with a typical POP3/SMTP mail
configuration) or with Exchange Server?

Peter Jamieson

> Peter Thank you for all the suggestions.
>
[quoted text clipped - 73 lines]
>> > tests
>> > i am merging only 2 names and email address). Can anyone help?

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