URGENT: Mailmerge help: My excel datasource did not open w

Hi tradertt

Can you elborate a bit more please.

RE: but when I created a new one it does not ...

Don't you have to tell Word which Workbook you need?

Hi,

Have you made sure that you have a blank line in your Word doc (hit return at the top of the doc) before you pull in the Excel data source. If you don't, you will run into all sorts of problems.

Excel data source will not open when opening Mail Merge document

Did you ever find a solution to your "excel datasource did not open" issue? My wife is encountering the same problem and is driving me crazy to find a solution (lol).

Thanks for your post. Yours is the only one I can find on the internet about this issue.

Hi,

In Word XP, you cannot open your datasource (Excel File) while your word file is open. If you want to select the recepients, you have to click the icon "Mail Merge Recepients" from the Mailmerge toolbar (To show the Mailmerge toolbar, click View from the menu bar, select Toolbars and click Mail Merge. Mail Merge Recepients is normally the 3rd icon [with a pen].

If you want to add data to your datasource, you have to close your word file.

Hope this will help you.

More fun with Mail Merge

Thanks for the response. Wow! That was fast. Now here are some interesting things to ponder...

Quote from lorenzod

In Word XP, you cannot open your datasource (Excel File) while your word file is open.

That's what I thougt but my wife called me to her computer last night and showed me several Mail Merge Word documents that, when they are opened, open the Excel file used as the data source, too! I have no idea how she did it or why she wants to do it that way but I never argue with my wife. It's pointless.

Quote from lorenzod

If you want to add data to your datasource, you have to close your word file.

That's what I told my wife but for some reason (since they have been able to do it in the past, like last week) they want it to work this way for new documents. Something about needing to verify that the data source is correct before they print.

There is one thing that I did notice that was different between the documents. When you open a Mail Merge Word document it will pop up an alert that says:

"Opening this document will run the following SQL command:
SELECT * FROM <FILEPATH><FILENAME>
Data from your database will be placed in the document. Do you want to continue?"

When opening one of the Word documents that DOES open the Excel data source file the "SELECT * FROM" always specifies the FILEPATH of the Excel data source.

If I change the data source through the Mail Merge wizard to a different Excel file, the "SELECT * FROM" now specifies the name of the "Sheet" on the Excel workbook rather than the FILEPATH of the document. So the Select statement changes to:

SELECT * FROM $Sheet1

After that, the Excel data source will no longer open when the Mail Merge Word document is opened. Strange, huh?

My wife says that she just created a Mail Merge document that opens the Excel file at the same time just last week. Has anyone ever had any experience with this?

Too much fun with Mail Merge

UPDATE::

Looks like this is an issue with the version of Office.

My wife says that she could get the Excel data source to open when the Word doc is opened if she uses Office 2000 to create the document. Versions of Office later that 2000 do not do it.

If you also want to verify your merged document before printing, you can click the icon View Merged Data (the one with "abc" and << >> on top). You can then click Next Record to view the recipients one by one.
You can also print a particular recipient if you want to. Just click Next Record until you reach the recipient and print.