Hi Jon,
To add to Beth's reply and possibly expand the confusion <g>. There aren't separate Technet newsgroups. They're the public ones
from news://msnews.microsoft.com that are 'managed' by a web interface and it's the posting interface, tied to your Windows
Live(Passport) account, tied to your Technet plus or Software Assurance subscription that triggers the monitoring by the MS support
folks. Basically it's more 'monitored' than 'managed' (private) as part of the MS concierge service to Technet subscribers. As a
Technet subscriber there is a subscriber resource center that you can use for Technet customer service for additional information.
MS has also established, through Technet and *separately* from these regular news/discussion groups the Technet forums at
http://microsoft.com/technet/community/
which also has a link to the 'peer support' newsgroups here from
http://microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/
The MS public newsgroups, in addition to also being mirrored to the MS Community, Technet and MSDN web interfaces are picked up by
numerous 3rd party forums as their own 'forums'.
As Beth mentioned, you will get a reply from MS and those folks often provide some information uniquely available to them, but for
many of the questions peer responses will also be available and often provide the data you need. From the Word side, you may want
to use the link below to also post this question to the MS Word Mailmerge newsgroup.
================
Thanks, Beth.
I thought it WAS a managed Newsgroup - I certainly got to it through the
Technet Managed Newsgroup list, having registered my NoSpam alias as a
Technet Plus user.
If this is not a managed newsgroup, then how do I find out which are Technet
Managed Newsgroups (within which I can expect a guaranteed reply)???
Thanks for your comment about better places to post this type of question -
I have in fact posted the question there also as suggested by DL - but as far
as I understand, no response is guaranteed, as I thought it was supposed to
be in this newsgroup. No response yet, but it is early days!
--
Jon >>
--
Please let us know if this has helped,
Bob Buckland ?

MS Office System Products MVP
LINKS
A. Specific newsgroup/discussion group mentioned in this message:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
or via browser:
http://microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/?dg=microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
B. MS Office Community discussion/newsgroups via Web Browser
http://microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx
or
Microsoft hosted newsgroups via Outlook Express/newsreader
news://msnews.microsoft.com