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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / July 2004Mail Merge Database Error
Hello, I was at a client yesterday to train them on how to use mail merge. We are using Windows XP Home with Microsoft Word 2003 and Outlook 2003. I selected Mail Merge from the Tools menu. Then labels (or any other, I get the same thing on all). I then select the label and that I want to use Microsoft Outlook. I get the box asking me which of the Outlook Contact Lists I want to use. I then get a box asking me for an ODBC Datasource. I uninstalled the Microsoft Office 2003 Basic and reinstalled. I tried it again and get the same thing. A Dialog Box comes up asking me for an ODBC Datasource and does not show me the Contact List from Outlook. Can anyone help me solve this problem? Thank you very much. Mark B. Avis It surprises me that you are asked for an ODBC datasource. As far as I know, what actually happens is that Word tries to use an OLEDB connection to the Jet database engine, which in turn uses a thing called the Outlook IISAM to get data from Outlook. I can only imagine that Word is failing to open that OLEDB connection and is then trying to use ODBC instead. Either way, it doesn't really sound to me if this approach is going to work. I don't know why - it may be that Office 2003 Basic or XP Home is missing some of the necessary components (here, I always use the Pro versions so it's difficult to tell). If you go into Office SETUP to add/remove Office components, it's probably worth checking to make sure that you are selecting all the necessary options to do with Mailmerge. Another approach you could try is to initiate the merge by selecting a contact folder in Outlook, then using Outlook Tools|Mail merge. This uses a completley different method to get the data to Word.  SignaturePeter Jamieson > Hello, > I was at a client yesterday to train them on how to use mail merge. We [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > help me solve this problem? Thank you very much. > Mark B. Avis I took a look at how to do the merge from Outlook. That looks pretty easy. I might give that a try at the client. But, how do I check Word to see why it wants an ODBC datasource? Thank you. Mark B. Avis > It surprises me that you are asked for an ODBC datasource. As far as I know, > what actually happens is that Word tries to use an OLEDB connection to the [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > help me solve this problem? Thank you very much. > > Mark B. Avis > But, how do I check Word to see why it > wants an ODBC datasource? There is no simple way. You could try using VBA to report the name of the data source, its connection string and SQL query string, and see if that sugests an answer Or you can probably get the same info. by using File|Save As to save the file in HTML format, then use a plain text editor to open it. Not far from the top you should see a bunch of XML tags that contain the information on the data source. SignaturePeter Jamieson > I took a look at how to do the merge from Outlook. That looks pretty easy. I > might give that a try at the client. But, how do I check Word to see why it [quoted text clipped - 41 lines] > > > help me solve this problem? Thank you very much. > > > Mark B. Avis
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