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MS Office Forum / Word / Mailmerge and Fax / December 2004Mail merge toolbar unavailable after SP3
Our office is using desktops with Office & Windows XP. We have an Access database that is used to generate a mail merge of insurance renewal notices. Clicking the Generate Letters button in Access opens the completed mail merge document for printing. After applying Office XP SP3, and pressing the same button to Generate Letters, the mail merge toolbar is now grayed out with only the Main Document Setup and Open Data Source buttons activate. I found a work around by clicking Open Data Source and selecting the XLS file that the Access database is supposed to use. Now the toolbar is activate and I can see all the records, but we did not have to do this extra step before. I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? This is almost certainly caused by a new security "feature" in SP3 - if you open your merge document manually in Word, you willprobably see a new dialog box saying that Word is about to execute some SQL and requesting your permission to do it. When Word is being automated as in your scenario, what happens is that the "no" option is assumed, so your document is opened with no connection to any data source. The following MS knowledgebase article may help: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;825765  SignaturePeter Jamieson > Our office is using desktops with Office & Windows XP. We have an Access > database that is used to generate a mail merge of insurance renewal notices. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix package, > but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? I think you hit nail right on the head Peter. That prompt you metioned does in fact come up and I'm sure this KB article addresses the issue. I will try this when I'm back in the office next week. Thank you for your assistance! > This is almost certainly caused by a new security "feature" in SP3 - if you > open your merge document manually in Word, you willprobably see a new dialog [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix package, > > but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? Yes, but you should not HAVE to do a registry change on every computer running mailmerge documents just because you are using SP-3 of Office XP or Office 2003. Do Microsoft have any idea how many computers in the world are affected negatively by this "security feature". Surely, they could have added an option in SP-1 of 2003 to simply turn off the warning. In my area, there are literally hundreds of computers needing registry changes for this problem of automation from Access to Word. Surely there is a better fix than this? dixie > I think you hit nail right on the head Peter. That prompt you metioned does > in fact come up and I'm sure this KB article addresses the issue. I will try [quoted text clipped - 34 lines] > > > I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix package, > > > but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? Microsoft can't win - they are damned if they don't do something about security and damned if they do. For most people this is not the issue you seem to imagine. The complaints about it here have been few. It is a minor inconvenience to protect the bulk of users from themselves, and for those for whom the warning is too much of an irritant, they have documented a workaround as indicated by Peter. It is not that difficult to create a registry patch from the information provided and either use a log-in script to implement it or provide the patch for those users upset about it to install themselves. For Word 2003 users that would be a text file called (say) FIXSQL.reg containing Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options] "SQLSecurityCheck"=dword:00000000 Just wait until you install the Windows XP SP2 upgrade, which has a raft of extra security measures to protect your users. :) Signature<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org <>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> > Yes, but you should not HAVE to do a registry change on every computer > running mailmerge documents just because you are using SP-3 of Office [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] >>>> I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix >>>> package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? Graham, how would I go about running that file. Do you have to invoke regedit, or does it automatically find the file and if so, where should the file be put? If this can be done semi automatically, it would solve a lot of problems where the actual users of the workstations in an organisation are not computer literate enough to change the registry themselves, so it falls to one person to get around maybe 50 computers and do it. dixie > Microsoft can't win - they are damned if they don't do something about > security and damned if they do. [quoted text clipped - 73 lines] > >>>> I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix > >>>> package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? It used to be (and may still be by default) possible to simply double click the filename *.reg in Windows Explorer for the reg file to be merged with the registry, but as this is potentially dangerous, I always change the default action to open such files in Notepad on computers I support. Select the file in Windows Explorer - right click and 'merge' to the registry. This will work regardless of the default settings. If your e-mail address is genuine, I have separately sent you the reg file to ensure that there is no ambiguity. Please open it in notepad to compare it with the posted information before using it. Signature<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org <>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> > Graham, how would I go about running that file. Do you have to invoke > regedit, or does it automatically find the file and if so, where [quoted text clipped - 88 lines] >>>>>> I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix >>>>>> package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? Graham, This is the exact scenario that I have been contending with for our merge documents for our clients all across the country; I came up with an in-eligant workaround by activating events in MS-Word 2003 VBA and then writing a macro to force open the datasource, but I'd appreciate a copy of the registry script file you sent to dixie that I could use. I'll have to play with it to see if it can try to add the entries for both MSO 2002 SP3 and MSO 2003 because we have not established an offical policy on what versions we develop our materials for. If you have the file, I'd appreciate it if you could send it to my work email scottl@firstpac.com > It used to be (and may still be by default) possible to simply double click > the filename *.reg in Windows Explorer for the reg file to be merged with [quoted text clipped - 100 lines] > >>>>>> I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 hotfix > >>>>>> package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? The content of the registry patch is listed in the earlier message i.e. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options] "SQLSecurityCheck"=dword:00000000 Copy the three lines to notepad and save as FIXSQL.REG Signature<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org <>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> > Graham, > This is the exact scenario that I have been contending with for our [quoted text clipped - 125 lines] >>>>>>>> I did some searching on the MS KB and applied the Post-SP3 >>>>>>>> hotfix package, but that did not correct the issue. Any ideas? Hi Dixie, > If this can be done semi automatically, it would solve a lot of problems > where the actual users of the workstations in an organisation are not > computer literate enough to change the registry themselves, so it falls to > one person to get around maybe 50 computers and do it. If you're in an organization with an IT Administration, the most efficient thing to do would be to create an System Policy (sets a particluar Registry key for all the users on the network). If you don't know what these are, time to break out the Office Resource Kit and maybe visit an Office setup group :-) Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) Have sent that on to one of the IT people Cindy - that should get some sort of reaction. They are however quite thin on the ground. Not a lot of money has been spent on IT support. dixie > Hi Dixie, > [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or > reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) |
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