Mail Merge with Shared Excel File

[Guest Natalie Stewart]

I have some individuals within my office that use a shared excel file to

 

conduct mail merges on a daily basis. This a 2003 excel file, and both

 

individuals use MS Office 2003. They open the MS Word 2003 doc that they are

 

using for the merge and begin with normal mail merge procedure. They choose

 

to work on "email messages" and use the current doc that's open. Once they

 

get to step 3 they browse to use an existing list , find the file in the

 

shared folder and select to use that one.

 

 

 

Once that is open they are asked to select which table they want to use. For

 

some reason there are 2 options for every worksheet in the file. When

 

selecting either one with the correct name of the table they want to use,

 

they are then taken to a second "select a table" screen (this second screen

 

does not come up in 2007). The screen does not allow them to do anything at

 

all. There is a dropdown that looks like they can choose which file they want

 

to work with, but the 'OK' option is greyed out and they can only cancel out

 

of this screen and cannot continue with the mail merge.

 

 

 

I have tried saving the file to the desktop and I still get the error

 

message. I have tried to conduct the mail merge using other docs within this

 

shared folder and they work fine. So one would assume it is a problem with

 

the file itself. So we restored the file from the date when they were last

 

able to use it without error, and still we get the error. I have MS Office 07

 

on my computer and when I conduct the same tests I get no error message at

 

all.

 

 

 

What could be the problem here? If it is the file, how do I fix it? Could it

 

be an issue with MS Office 2003?

 

--

 

Natalie A. Stewart

 

Application Support and Training Specialist

 

Saralux LLC