Mail merge will not initialize my document

Anonymous
2024-11-19T16:51:57+00:00

Office 2016.

When trying to do a mail merge, when it comes time to select the document to use, if I select "existing document", then navigate to the document location, select the document, a message appears "trying to initialize and verify", then it just spins without ever loading the document.

If I select "new document", a message " trying to initialize MS WORD" appears. Then no further action, until I have to restart OUTLOOK.

I can open WORD separately with no problem.

Although when I try to open my merge document, I see a message for READ ONLY as the document is locked by another user. But there is only me on this computer.

Any solution/reason?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2024-11-29T22:10:23+00:00

Start the mail merge in Word, not from the data source application.

If you want to send the Newsletters as an attachment to email messages, use the Merge with Attachments facility of my Merge Tools Add-in that is contained in the MERGE TOOLS ADD-IN.zip file that you can download from:

 https://mergetoolsaddin.com/

Extract the files from the archive and read the:

“READ ME – Setting up and using the Merge Tools Add-in.pdf

to see how to install and use the various tools.

Using those tools, it is possible to perform the following types of merge that cannot be done with Mail Merge “out-of-the-box”:

  • Merge to e-mail messages either with or without attachments, with the documents created by the merge being sent as either Word or PDF attachments or as the body of the e-mail message .  The email messages can, if necessary, also be sent to CC and BCC addresses and the subject of the message can include data from a field in the data source.
  • Merge to individual documents in either Word or PDF format with the filenames being supplied by the data in one of the fields in the data source
  • Many to One type merges, which can be used for creating documents such as invoices where there are multiple records in the data source that have common data in one of the fields
  • Merging to a document that will include a chart that is unique to each record in the data source
  • Merging a document with Content Controls
  • Merging a document that contains Legacy FormFields
  • Duplex Merges
  • Merging to a printer that will collate and staple the output created from each record in the data source.

The requirements for using the system are:

  • The mail merge main document must be of the Letters type, though that does not mean that the output cannot be sent as an e-mail message where relevant.
  • For the Many To One, Merge with Attachments and Merge to Individual Docs utilities, the data source may be either a table or query in an Access database, or in the form of an Excel worksheet. For the Chart Merge utility, see the Mail Merging with Charts document that is included in the Merge Tools Add-in Zip file for additional requirements for the data source for use with that utility
  • For a data source in the form of an Excel worksheet, the field names must be in the first row of the worksheet and there must be a field name in all of the cells in that row that are within the range of columns that contain the data.
  • For both types of data source, the field names must contain only alphanumeric characters (No @,#,$,%,&,(,), etc) and the field names must not start with a numeric character (0-9). The number of characters in the field names, including spaces, must not be more than 40.

The MergeTools Add-in will NOT work with the “New Outlook”, which is just a re-badged version of Windows Mail and like its predecessor, it does not support automation and hence will not send the messages created by the MergeTools Add-in.

Be aware, that any messages that you had tried to send with the “New Outlook” will have been placed in the Outbox of the original Outlook and they will be sent as soon as you revert to that version of Outlook.   If you do not want that to happen, you should put Outlook Off-line, or disconnect your computer from the Internet.

For a demonstration of the use of the facility, prepared by a Microsoft employee, see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj_s3cdfVDY

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

    I had this exact issue of being unable to initiate a mail merge from Outlook, using the same process and procedures that I have used for years for our Christmas card mailing.

    I contacted Microsoft support and spent an hour and a half with an agent on the phone and waited patiently as he spent prolonged periods of time reading from their database of actions to take and then performing them to no avail (repairing Office, etc.).

    Finally, after one of his reading spells, I think he discovered that this is a defect with the latest build of Office 365 (although for some reason the agent was very coy about this and apparently they are coached not to acknowledge defects) and the resolution was to roll back to a prior version. As soon as I tried the mail merge from Outlook in the prior version (i.e., the one prior to this defect in the software), the mail merge function worked perfectly and launched Word.

    I then asked the question of whether the problem would recur when Office 365 performs an automatic update. Unfortunately, the junior technician's response was "no, you should be good now." I thought that maybe he had insight that a fix for this was imminent and that my next update would include resolution of the defect. Unfortunately, my intuition was correct and the next day Office 365 had updated itself and the problem is back. I should have gone in to Office 365 and turned off automatic updates, as it was obvious I had more IT experience than he.

    Hopefully, someone from MS is monitoring the community and a resolution for this will be forthcoming quickly!

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-23T13:04:35+00:00

    Thank you for the update. Hopefully they will fix this in a release now that they are aware the bug exsits.

    I may look into rolling back the version so I don't have to wait for an update. I appreciate the info!

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  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-12-24T02:36:53+00:00

    Start the process in Word and if you want to use Outlook data for the merge, select the Choose from Outlook Contacts in the Select Recipients facility in Word.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-26T13:16:28+00:00

    I tried this as well. Microsoft no longer shows our public contact lists when initiating a mail merge from Word. We do have these set as favorites and have used this method before this issue. There is no smooth or direct connection to mail merge without first copying the list over to local or exporting the list to excel. Word doesn't show the contacts. Outlook just freezes up.

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