Troubleshoot issues in Mail Merge

Even though the Mail merge is a relatively straightforward process from the end user’s point of view, this process seems to be complex from the technical analysis. When you perform a Mail merge procedure, Word will request and use data files from other applications to create totally new documents. Therefore, it’s useful to understand some issues as well as fix some of the most common issues occurred during the Mail merge process.

 

Errors occurred from the primary document

  • Because Word requests a lot of resource to access hundreds or thousands data records for the merge, it’s recommended to quit any unnecessary applications running at the same time during this process. By doing it, it will help to fix many issues with large data sources.

  • During the preview of merge results, you proof the primary document that will apply for all the records generated in the complication step

  • It’s necessary to pay more attention to punctuation near field codes in the primary letter because Word Grammar Check will almost never catch it. Therefore, visually checking punctuation in these areas makes sure that the punctuation is correct.

  • For a professional letter, it’s important to standardize the font size and font face in the entire of the document. However, if there is any different formatting occurred in merging records to the variable text, you can try to format the field codes in the primary document rather than deal with records in the data source

 

Errors occurred from data sources

  • The primary error that most frequently occurred from the data sources is where one record has incomplete information or incorrect information. Therefore, you need to correct those incorrect or incomplete records from the Mail Merge Recipient dialog box.

  • However, there might be some kinds of connection established to a data source don’t prevent to edit the records in the database. In this situation, you need to open the data file either directly from the original data sources (e.g. Outlook contacts, Excel table or Access database) or contact to the person who maintains that data source