Trouble with a text file mail merge

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Rick Kasten - 17 Mar 2004 05:07 GMT

I am trying to merge a comma-delimited text file off addresses into a letter
that needs to be sent to each of the addresses. I select my text file, and
I get the following error:

"Word could not merge the main document with the data source because the
data records were empty or no data records matched your query options."

What am I doing wrong here?

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Peter Hewett - 17 Mar 2004 07:40 GMT

Hi Rick Kasten

The first row of your text file needs to contain a comma delimited list of the
field names, something like this:

FirstName, Lastname, Age, Address
Peter, Hewett, 40, 16 Woolacombe Road
Paul, Kings, 42, 29 Lancaster Terrace

HTH + Cheers - Peter

"Rick Kasten" <rkasten@NOSPAM.charter.net>, said:

>I am trying to merge a comma-delimited text file off addresses into a letter
>that needs to be sent to each of the addresses. I select my text file, and
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
>What am I doing wrong here?

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Rick Kasten - 17 Mar 2004 12:30 GMT

I have that, but it is still not working. Here is my AddressBlock:

{ ADDRESSBLOCK \f "<<_NAME_>>

<<_COMPANY_>>

<<_ADDRESS_>>

<<_CITY_>><<, _STATE_>><< _ZIP_>>" \l 1033 \c 0 \e "" }

and here are the first two lines of my mail file:

NAME,COMPANY,ADDRESS,CITY,STATE,ZIP
This Guy,Computer Rentals,20 Main St,Somewhere,MA,01581

Would it help to mention that I never get asked to define any of the fields
during the import? All I get asked is the field delimiter (,) and the
record delimiter (enter).

Rick

> Hi Rick Kasten
>
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> >
> >What am I doing wrong here?

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Peter Hewett - 17 Mar 2004 14:36 GMT

Hi Rick Kasten

I've spent a while playing around with Word XP's MailMerge wizard and I've
managed to reproduce your problem. Despite what you've posted it looks like
your data source text file only contains header rows and no data rows.

Here's a couple of things to check. When using the MailMerge Wizard if you get
the option of selecting the field and record delimiters select a "comma" and
"enter" respectively. Also try using notepad to create a dummy data file and see
if that works. Also rerun the Wizard and start with a clean document.

The only way I recreated this error was when I had a header row but no data row.

HTH + Cheers - Peter

"Rick Kasten" <rkasten@NOSPAM.charter.net>, said:

>I have that, but it is still not working. Here is my AddressBlock:
>
[quoted text clipped - 41 lines]
>> >
>> >What am I doing wrong here?

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