How do I resolve Contact folder data source issues?

[SJD30942]

When using Microsoft Office Word 2003 for Mail Merge to create mailing labels
from my Contacts file I get the following message:
"Unable to obtain a list of tables from the data source." I've tried
everything and am becoming more frustrated each day. I'd used this feature
many times last year so I know it did work as advertised. It appears as
though something has become out of sync? Any help and/or suggestions will be
appreciated.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Best practice is to start the merge in Outlook, using the Tools | Mail Merge command in a contacts folder, rather than in Word.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[SJD30942]

Thank you Sue Mosher. Your info gave me another way to accomplish my needs.
By playing with it I discovered A Corel Address Book that I no longer needed
so I deleted it. Everything seems to work through Microsoft Office Word 2003
as well as Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 as advertised. Thanks aqain for
taking the time to respond and end my frustrations.

 

[MikeL]

I'm having the same trouble you stated you had...the mail merge wizard in
Word 2003 has been working fine for well over a year and then, suddenly last
week, I am getting the error about unable to obtain list of tables from the
data source. I have run the detect and repair feature and even reinstalled
Office 2003. No luck. I don't have any other address books. It may very well
be best to start from Outlook to do a mail merge but I'm, frankly, disturbed
that no one seems to know what has gone wrong with the wizard in Word. I saw
on some site that Microsoft is aware of the problem, but there are no
solutions posted, and this problem has been on the posts for quite some time.
I thought I might just as well bite the bullet and purchase Office 2007, but
it looks like the problem exists in that version as well. Any thoughts?

 

[MikeL]

This is a followup to my earlier post. I don't know if this had the effect of
screwing up the Word mail merge wizard, but last week sometime, I got an
error message when I opened Outlook that my Personal Folder. pst file had not
been properly shut down last time (or something to that effect). The computer
did a self-analysis of the file and then it opened as usual, no problems.
Just food for thought. Incidentally, I tried using the Word 2003 mail merge
wizard on my home computer and it still works fine. It is only on my work
laptop that the problem has occurred.

 

[Sam]

I am having the same issue. I have trried creating a document from outlook
mail merge but the form in word is coming up blank.

Thoughts?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

You provided no information on what you did, what happened and what you
thought should happen that didn't. Mail merges from Outlook work fine. Read
the Help files.

 

[tinks]

Working with Word 2007, I created a Word document to use for labels for mail
merges from Outlook. I start the mail merge from Outlook and I get an error
message that the data source has already been populated. When I remove
populated info, the document the "mailing list" tab is greyed out. Any
ideas? ps Word also shows that multiple word doc's are open when in there is
really only one open

 

[Russ Valentine]

Post is far too unclear. State precisely what you are doing and what happens
if you expect us to guess what you're doing wrong.
Clarify what this "Word Document" is. When you start a merge from Outlook,
you usually create the merge document as you go. Trying to use something you
imagine to be a "saved merge document" would certainly generate some errors
like this since it would already has its datasource connected.
Your post would be better off made to the Word mail merge group.