Mail merge, odd problem

[presting]

We have been using Word for e-mail merge, but now we need Personalized
Hyperlinks and we are switching to Publisher. Unfortunately, now the
only data fields which work are the Personalized Hyperlinks, and
everything else displays in the mailed messages as a field name, not
with any merged data.

Our addresses and data are in Excel spreadsheets. We found the wizard
to be very intuitive and our setup had no problems or error messages.
When we show the peiview of e-mails, each field has live data as it
should. The only problem is that the emails are sent out with no live
data. Only the Personalized Hyperlink varies from one email to the
next - all the rest of every email is the same. Every merge field
shows its field name, never any data.

More oddly, we do see live data in the Subject of our emails. We get
a personalized Subject line for each email recipient, but the Greeting
line in the message body says only "Greeting Line", not "Dear so-and-
so". This suggest taht the connection to the spreadsheet is OK, but
somehow the merge fields in the document are the problem.

We must be missing something simple, but it's not obvious. We have
Publisher 2007 12.0.4518.1014 from the Office Enterprise Edition.

Any suggestions? Please?

 

[Mary Sauer]

There is mail merge help here
Mail, e-mail, and catalog merge
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/CH100502901033.aspx

 

[presting]

Thanks for the pointer. We have been through the help files, and the
merge-to-email setup goes very smoothly. All the options which the
instructions tell us to expect are easy to find, and everything works
the way the instructions tell us. There are no signs during the mail
merge set-up that anything is about to go wrong.

I'm suspecting that something important but non-obvious is wrong in my
installation or my file system. Are there any issues in the Data
Connection specification, file permissions, or Compatibility Modes
that might get in our way? Anything else I should double-check?

Even though we are first-time Publisher users, I found it very easy to
understand and use. It has exactly the feature we need, clearly
identified in the marketing pages and in the menus. Everything seems
to be working, it's only the final product that turns out wrong.

Thanks again for the prompt answer. Any other suggestions, or wild
speculations, will be appreciated too!

- Ken

 

[signarture]

i am encountering the identical issue. in my search for solutions have
happened upon your posting from a couple of months back.
if you were able to resolve the issue, i would be very grateful to know what
steps you took. i've spent the last 2 days trying to figure this out to no
avail, and have 500+ new leads from a trade show waiting on that all
important follow up contact which i was hoping would look oh so professional
and personalised by buying this product!