Document for email with picture linked to URL (Word 2002)

[eg_go]

Hi, all,

I don't have much experience with mail merge in Word. What I want to do
is like a template for a Newsletter with some part to be constant
(header and some pictures from an URL), and the rest to be editable.
I've made a basic document with the field {INCLUDEPICTURE 'my URL' \d
\* MERGEFORMAT } which shows the picture with Alt-F9, and I have
unchecked the option "Update links on save" in the
Tools->Options->General>Web Options->Files, as suggested in other
posts. When I save the file as Web page filtered, the html code shows
the url link; but when I email the document with the Mail Merge wizard,
the picture appears embedded and the url link is not there. Is there a
way to fix this?... I

Is Word a good choice to do this? Can someone point me in the right
direction? In case it's necessary, I have some experience programming
VBA in other Office applications, and a little bit in Word. I won't be
the one editing and emailing the document, so I want it to be the
easiest possible for the user.

Thank you in advance for any idea.

Gaby

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I haven't looked at this properly for a while, but at one time you could use
a nested
mergefield like the following to change the behaviour of images:

{ QUOTE { INCLUDEPICTURE http://www.mysite.com/myimage.jpg
\*MERGEFORMATINET \d } }

All the {} need to be the special field braces you can insert using ctrl-F9.
That may work if you just want to send a link to a single image (i.e. all
the e-mails link to the same image). If you need each e-mail to link to a
different image, you /may/ be able to replace the URL by a mergefield
containing the URL, e.g.

{ QUOTE { INCLUDEPICTURE "{ MERGEFIELD picureURL }"
\*MERGEFORMATINET \d } }

You may also have to uncheck Word Tools|Options|General|Web
Options|Files|Update links on save.

When sending stuff by e-mail it's as well to bear in mind that not every
recipient's e-mail client works the same way. e.g., I still sometimes use a
client that only understands plain text and will not resolve URLs. As far as
Word is concerned, I don't think the Word/Outlook combination makes this
kind of stuff particularly easy to control. I expect there are third party
tools out there but I don't know anything about them.

Peter Jamieson

 

[eg_go]

Thank you, Peter, for your reply. I'm not sure I understand the QUOTE
field in this context. I tried as you said and the picture is not
showing. What is it supposed to do?..

Thank you again,
Gaby

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The QUOTE is a kludge which happened to alter the behaviour of the
INCLUDEPICTURE field in a useful way, but it obviously hasn't worked in this
case.

I'll have another look at this, but
a. it may take some time
b. it's quite possible that it just can't be done with the current version
of Word/Outlook What is the full version number of the version you are
using (Have a look in Help|About for both Word and Excel).

Peter Jamieson

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Well, I have had another look at this and so far, nothing I have done so far
allows an HTML <img src> tag through to the mail recipient - Word always
embeds the image in the file and uses a cid: URL to reference it in the
e-mail.

The only thing I noticed as I was doing this was that using the filtered
HTML option does not even preserve the picture URL I inserted - instead,
Word saves the picture in the folder associated with the .htm and references
the local picture when you re-open the .htm. So if there is a solution to
this, I suspect that it only works if you do not use the "filtered" option
when saving

Peter Jamieson

 

[eg_go]

This is what tried lately: I created the document with Front Page
(2002) with 3 linked images, two of them with hyperlinks. I opened the
htm file with Word, and for the linked image without hyperlink, Alt-F9
showed the INCLUDEPICTURE field with the url link; however, for the
other two images it only showed the HYPERLINK field. After saving the
file with the Filtered option, it apparently retained both the link and
the hyperlink, and displayed and behaved fine with IExplorer (I didn't
try emailing).

The problem now is when I reope the file with word and save it again as
Filtered. Two more HYPERLINK fields are added to one of the pictures,
but the other still shows one field (?). And every time I open and save
the file, two more HYPERLINK fields are added for that image.

As the purpose of all these workarounds was for the user (who doesn't
have or use Front Page) to have a Word template -with the linked images
and hyperlinks- to create a Newsletter for emailing, all this approach
seems useless.

I would like to know if this strange behavior pesists with Office 2003.

Anyway, I think I'll stop with this Word nonsense, and look for another
solution. Thank you anyway for your time and help.

Gaby

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Well done! Thanks for posting back.

Peter Jamieson