BCM 2007 Publisher 2007 Marketing Campaign Merge Issue

[Jeff]

I created a marketing campaign in Publisher, select start a marketing
campaign (or start the marketing campaign from BCM first - same problem
either way).

In Publisher, I add the fileds for the merge and select send e-mail.
Publisher does its thing, shows the 1st contact's name on the form, sends the
email, thn diplays the publisher form with the field info displayed - no
data. Emails go to the appropriate addresses, but the merge fields show the
filed names - not the contact names.

How do I resolve this???

thanks,

Jeff

 

[Netwalker]

I'm having the same problem. I can run back-to-back tests, no changes in
between, and different fields will merge and not merge - it seems that some
fields always merge, but never all of them. Doesn anybody have any info on
this issues. There are several posts of this issue, but no answer so far.

 

[Netwalker]

Here's a further update. I finally got my merge to work. In my opinion,
Publisher 2007 is very touchy. Before I could get the merge to work, I had to
clear all "Design Checker" messages, which was not an obvious process. I had
one message that there was an invisible object that would not be printed. The
"go to item" would not show the object. I tried "sending objects to back" and
all other search techniques I could think of to expose the hidden object.
What finally worked, was doing a select-all, then unselecting all visible
objects one-by-one and finally doing a "cut" (then doing a paste just out of
curiosity, I was shown an empty table object). I had several other similar,
not-so-obvious issues that took considerable effort to resolve. One other
trick I found is that if everything else fails in trying to identify a Design
Checker message, sometimes just restarting Publisher will clear the message;
and also, it's a good idea to restart the program even when everything looks
ok but before you try to do a merge. Publisher seems to get easily confused
when everything is not just right and then is very poor at cleaning up after
they have been fixed without doing a restart. I hope this helps everybody
live with Publisher 2007 until Microsoft gets it cleaned up.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Netwalker,

From reading your post it sounds like you are having a truly "seamless,
integrated", Office System experience there! Thank god that at least you can
accomplish this "all in one place!"

-THP

Here's a further update. I finally got my merge to work. In my opinion,
Publisher 2007 is very touchy. Before I could get the merge to work, I had to
clear all "Design Checker" messages, which was not an obvious process. I had
one message that there was an invisible object that would not be printed. The
"go to item" would not show the object. I tried "sending objects to back" and
all other search techniques I could think of to expose the hidden object.
What finally worked, was doing a select-all, then unselecting all visible
objects one-by-one and finally doing a "cut" (then doing a paste just out of
curiosity, I was shown an empty table object). I had several other similar,
not-so-obvious issues that took considerable effort to resolve. One other
trick I found is that if everything else fails in trying to identify a Design
Checker message, sometimes just restarting Publisher will clear the message;
and also, it's a good idea to restart the program even when everything looks
ok but before you try to do a merge. Publisher seems to get easily confused
when everything is not just right and then is very poor at cleaning up after
they have been fixed without doing a restart. I hope this helps everybody
live with Publisher 2007 until Microsoft gets it cleaned up.

I created a marketing campaign in Publisher, select start a marketing
campaign (or start the marketing campaign from BCM first - same problem

[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]

Jeff

 

[Netwalker]

Between 2007 Outlook, BCM, Publisher, Office Accounting and all the rest of
the Office Suite, there is a tremendous amount of seamless integration - very
powerful and useful stuff. Microsoft needs to address some issues though to
make it painless or even acceptable to many users. I believe that almost no
non-programmer would continue to use Publisher for mail merging after
encountering the kinds of errors that I dealt with. Using Publisher to create
something like a Webpage were you are able to immediately see if you've got
the results you want and then only having to post corrections to one location
is one thing. But, sending an email to 28 valued leads only to discover that
those valued leads did not receive what I saw in preview after preview is a
whole different story. I think I've learned enough about how to eventually
get the results that I want and more importantly to know so before I send it
out to a customer; and, being a long-time programmer, I have the mindset to
do it again. But, I would not even consider expecting any non-programmer
office worker to use Publisher until a revised version is released.

Netwalker,

From reading your post it sounds like you are having a truly "seamless,
integrated", Office System experience there! Thank god that at least you can
accomplish this "all in one place!"

-THP

Here's a further update. I finally got my merge to work. In my opinion,
Publisher 2007 is very touchy. Before I could get the merge to work, I had to
clear all "Design Checker" messages, which was not an obvious process. I had
one message that there was an invisible object that would not be printed. The
"go to item" would not show the object. I tried "sending objects to back" and
all other search techniques I could think of to expose the hidden object.
What finally worked, was doing a select-all, then unselecting all visible
objects one-by-one and finally doing a "cut" (then doing a paste just out of
curiosity, I was shown an empty table object). I had several other similar,
not-so-obvious issues that took considerable effort to resolve. One other
trick I found is that if everything else fails in trying to identify a Design
Checker message, sometimes just restarting Publisher will clear the message;
and also, it's a good idea to restart the program even when everything looks
ok but before you try to do a merge. Publisher seems to get easily confused
when everything is not just right and then is very poor at cleaning up after
they have been fixed without doing a restart. I hope this helps everybody
live with Publisher 2007 until Microsoft gets it cleaned up.

I created a marketing campaign in Publisher, select start a marketing
campaign (or start the marketing campaign from BCM first - same problem

[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]

Jeff

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Netwalker,

I am a non-programmer.

Millions of other (an overwhelming majority of the targeted marketplace)
Office System users are non-programmers.

Logical deduction and subsequent note to MS: Make Office work more reliably
for the convenient end-user experience of non-programmers!

-THP

Between 2007 Outlook, BCM, Publisher, Office Accounting and all the rest of
the Office Suite, there is a tremendous amount of seamless integration - very
powerful and useful stuff. Microsoft needs to address some issues though to
make it painless or even acceptable to many users. I believe that almost no
non-programmer would continue to use Publisher for mail merging after
encountering the kinds of errors that I dealt with. Using Publisher to create
something like a Webpage were you are able to immediately see if you've got
the results you want and then only having to post corrections to one location
is one thing. But, sending an email to 28 valued leads only to discover that
those valued leads did not receive what I saw in preview after preview is a
whole different story. I think I've learned enough about how to eventually
get the results that I want and more importantly to know so before I send it
out to a customer; and, being a long-time programmer, I have the mindset to
do it again. But, I would not even consider expecting any non-programmer
office worker to use Publisher until a revised version is released.

Netwalker,

[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]

 

[ellen]

Jeff wrote on 04/09/2007 09:26 ET :

I created a marketing campaign in Publisher, select start a marketing
campaign (or start the marketing campaign from BCM first - same problem
either way).

In Publisher, I add the fileds for the merge and select send e-mail.
Publisher does its thing, shows the 1st contact's name on the form, send the
email, thn diplays the publisher form with the field info displayed - no
data. Emails go to the appropriate addresses, but the merge fields show the
filed names - not the contact names.

How do I resolve this???

thanks,

Jeff

this thread was eons ago, but i am having same problem. In preview it show
the document merged and the names in the name field. Once sent, the recipien
gets the document and sees only a picture merged, yet sees the merge fields i
the brackets where their name and address should be. Also, the document on th
receiver end is all broke up and looks like a puzzle scrambled. HELP>