Email Merge not working - Word/Outlook 2003

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Mr B - 03 May 2007 22:39 GMT

My wife is trying to send an email merge through Word. She has an Excel file
with 3 names in it and email addresses. When she goes through the Email
Merge Wizard steps, at the end she clicks the Go button but nothing happens.

I do the same thing on my PC at work and also nothing appears to happen but
then I get the messages showing up in Outlook in Sent and the emails do go
through. On her PC there's nothing in Sent, no Error messages, etc so I don't
know what it's doing.

Anyone seen this before and have any idea what might be wrong? Or is there
any way to view a log or something to see what might be going on (or not
going on)? There's no status bar as it's sending, no confirmation that it
worked or didn't, no anything to know what might be wrong.

Everything else within Outlook works fine. It is the default email app on
the computer, I'm dumbfounded as to what might be broken.

Thanks.

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Peter Jamieson - 04 May 2007 07:55 GMT

Other people have reported this, but so far, no-one seems to have found the
cause.

> My wife is trying to send an email merge through Word. She has an Excel
> file
> with 3 names in it and email addresses. When she goes through the Email
> Merge Wizard steps, at the end she clicks the Go button but nothing
> happens.

Is she using selecting the HTML option in Word? If she changes to the "Plain
text" option or "Attachment" option, does the merge work? (She will face
some additional popup dialog boxes generated by Outlook that she can get rid
of by downloading the free utility at
http://www.contextmagic.com/express-clickyes/ )

Other than that, can we assume that this is on a standalone PC that is
connected directly to an Internet mail provider (POP3/SMTP)? Previously,
I've had the impression that most of the people with this problem are
connected to an MS Exchange server.

There are a few other things I have suggested people try in the past but
since none of them ever seems to have fixed the problem I'll only post them
here if it seems worth it. One question though: is there more than one
Outlook profile on the PC she is using (e.g. perhaps her profile and your
profile?)

Peter Jamieson

> My wife is trying to send an email merge through Word. She has an Excel
> file
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Thanks.

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Mr B - 04 May 2007 13:24 GMT

Well, just for the hell of it I did a Detect and Repair in Outlook and now
it's working. No idea what was wrong but oh well.

It'd sure be nice if there was some sort of log or status message or
something when doing a email merge. Did that get added in 2007 by any chance
or is that just as invisible?

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Peter Jamieson - 04 May 2007 17:47 GMT

> Well, just for the hell of it I did a Detect and Repair in Outlook and now
> it's working. No idea what was wrong but oh well.

Thanks for letting me know.

That's interesting because that definitely didn't work for some others with
this problem.

> It'd sure be nice if there was some sort of log or status message or
> something when doing a email merge.

I agree.

> Did that get added in 2007 by any chance
> or is that just as invisible?

Not as far as I know. You can enable Outlook Tools|Options|Other|Advanced
Options|Enable logging (troubleshooting)

but as far as I can tell, Word does not use the Outlook object model to send
these messages (it uses MAPI, which has a close relationship with MAPI but
isn't quite the same thing) and if they don't reach Outlook, Outlook logging
probably won't help.

Peter Jamieson

> Well, just for the hell of it I did a Detect and Repair in Outlook and now
> it's working. No idea what was wrong but oh well.
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> chance
> or is that just as invisible?

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Heather - 23 May 2007 16:13 GMT

I thought I would add my own experience to the forum in the hope that it
helps others.

I have used email merging many times before with no problems. Then today I
experienced exactly the same problem that Mr B describes. To rectify the
problem, I also performed a Detect and Repair through Add or Remove Programs.
When the Detect and Repair was running a message popped up asking me whether
the user name and password of a new email account I had added today was
correct (its a standard message that sometimes occurs in Outlook). When
accepting the user name and password, Detect and Repair continued ad finished
its cycle. The problem was no longer and can send merged email again!

Perhaps afterall it had something to do with the fact that I had added a new
email account today which had caused the blip.

Hope this helps others.

Heather

> > Well, just for the hell of it I did a Detect and Repair in Outlook and now
> > it's working. No idea what was wrong but oh well.
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> > chance
> > or is that just as invisible?

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