Merge with Outlook Groups?

[Chris]

I know that Word will perform a merge using individual
contacts from Outlook. What our company wants to do is
use Outlook's groups or distribution lists as mail merge
lists in Word, but at a glance I don't see that it can be
done. I will post to the Outlook newsgroup also, but,
does anyone have any insight? Thanks.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

but at a glance I don't see that it can be

done.

This is correct.

If I were doing this and the address data was always stored in Outlook
folders, I would probably write some Outlook VBA code that worked roughly
along the lines of the existing Outlook Tools|Mail merge feature, which
generates an intermediate Word document containing the data from the
specified/selected contact items then uses Automation to attach a specified
Word template or document to that intermediate data source.

There is some code for doing Outlook contact exports etc. at
http://www.slipstick.com

I have some code for extracting stuff from individual Outlook contact items
and stuffing it more directly into Word documents which might also help
(although it doesn't actually deal with distribution lists (I didn't get
that far), doesn't actually use MailMerge, and generally avoids User
Interface problems). If interested, I'd search Google Groups for "Jamieson
Inspector" and you'll probably find some info. from around Oct. 2002. Or
ask.

 

[Chris]

*sigh* well I had hoped it might be a little
simpler...thanks for the input. I'll take a look at the
code; generally though I am able to get the job done for
single contacts, or selected items from the contacts
folder; groups and DLs are the big hassle. Also, I
understand there are third-party products that can handle
the task; so I'll probably do a post asking if anyone has
experience with these.

Thank you much!!!

 

[Graham Mayor]

An alternative is to make use of categories. If you assign a unique category
to the items in each of your groups, you can merge by category from within
Outlook. You can create your own categories in Outlook and assign more than
one category to a record.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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