Help! Mail merge faxes a document for each person to all numbers!

[datapros]

Damm Microsoft. I am so sick of their software! Manual is no help.
Doesn't even have what I have for options on screen.

Anyway, here is the problem. I have tried this with a Brother mfc
420cn networked fax/printer/copier/scanner and a notebook with a modem
and xp and fax service enabled.

Used word to do a mail merge but when it goes through the faxing it
faxes all right but faxes all documents in the merge to each fax
number.

In other words if I do a test mail merge to 3 fax machine numbers
addressed to 3 different people it will send each number the letters
for all 3 people.

I am using a coma deliminated text file and the fax software address
book are both the same and sorted in same order.

Man, how many years does it take for MS to make this easier?

Here is another gripe MS. Why is it when you want to saves as in MS
Word and the title to the documents isn't what you want and you have
"copied" to clipboard the text you want you have to Ctrl V rather than
"paste"?

It is the same damm thing in MS street and trips. MS programs are not
even compatible with themselves.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Because these newsgroups/communities have "microsoft.public" at the
beginning of their names, you could be fooled into thinking that someone in
Microsoft reads them and answers your questions. Well of course someone at
Microsoft may be reading them, but all the people who answer questions in
this newsgroup are users like yourself or volunteers.

For merging to fax I suggest you look at http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk/t0001.htm -
although it's much more complicated than any user would hope, if you can get
the code to work on your system it's probably the best way to do this
particular task.

Peter Jamieson

 

[datapros]

Well even though word states it will use txt and csv files it doesn't
very well. In my researching this I have learned most people thought
W2K and office 2K worked best for fax merge. I loaded them up and
found it worked different but still didn't work satisfactory.

Another problem I ran into was in addition to the txt and csv files
word is supposed to use oulook for merge data. So in trying to use
Outlook I ran into another damm age old microsoft problem. I could
not import my data into outlook. Over the years I have had to tolerate
that problem when working on windows computers. Trying to save
customers emails and address books. You can export but can't import.
Damm Microsoft. By the way, the easiest way is to partition your hard
drive and change your store dir to a dir on d: drive.

The major problem with the way microsoft makes this work is by using 2
different data sources for the fax dialing and data merge info. The 2
lists need to be identical from what I can tell so that you don't get
the wrong name to a fax number.

Of course this the MOST STUPID THING ON THE PLANET! It should be done
from one common data source just to elimante all these problems.

I am really surprised no one has written a low cost simple program for
this. It seems it would be fairly simple. Portions of this have
already been done. "Just The Fax" has the WYSIWYG portion but it only
is for one fax. All they need to do is combine it with their "Mighty
Fax" program.

All in all I am giving up on word for a solution to this problem. As
usual microsofts is to buggy to be reliable if I can get it to work at
all. I have already spent to much time on it and I am not going to
spend 20 hours getting my data into outlook.

THanks for the links