Mail Merge uses Outlook instead of Excel data source

I am unable to do mail merges for the last few weeks. Since I've downloaded all the "Security" updates from
Microsoft. I am using Office 2003 so Word, Excel and Outlook are 2003. I am trying to do a simple email merge with one merge field: First Name. The data source is an Excel spreadsheet with email address, first name, last name and company name.

I open up the merge document and the data source and can preview the merged letters. I then merge to email and
change mail format to plain text and click OK. Then I get dialog boxes trying to match my email addresses with ones
in my Outlook address book. If the person in theExcel list is called Ann and I have an Ann in my address book,
it sends the email to the Ann in the address book not the Ann in the data source. These emails are sent only to
recipients whose first name happens to reside in my address book and matches the first name in the Excel file. Emails are not sent to the email addresses in the data source file. Aside from the fact that the new security settings in Outlook
2003 now require that I click OK to approve each email (which I bypassed with a utility) now I have this problem
with the data source. Frankly, my IT guy does not know how to fix the problem other than to uninstall Office
2003 and install Office 2000.

Any assistance would be appreciated to fix this problem.

Thank you,

Karminak

It sounds as if you are specifying the first name in your dataq source as
the e-mail address for the merge. You have to specify the e-mail address
field in the data source as the e-mail address for the merge. Word cannot
guess that the e-mail address in your data source is the field that it needs
to use.

--
Peter Jamieson

"Karminak" wrote in message
news
I am unable to do mail merges for the last few weeks. Since I've
downloaded all the "Security" updates from
Microsoft. I am using Office 2003 so Word, Excel and Outlook are 2003. I
am trying to do a simple email merge with one merge field: First Name. The
data source is an Excel spreadsheet with email address, first name, last
name and company name.

I open up the merge document and the data source and can preview the
merged letters. I then merge to email and
change mail format to plain text and click OK. Then I get dialog boxes
trying to match my email addresses with ones
in my Outlook address book. If the person in theExcel list is called Ann
and I have an Ann in my address book,
it sends the email to the Ann in the address book not the Ann in the data
source. These emails are sent only to
recipients whose first name happens to reside in my address book and
matches the first name in the Excel file. Emails are not sent to the email
addresses in the data source file. Aside from the fact that the new security
settings in Outlook
2003 now require that I click OK to approve each email (which I bypassed
with a utility) now I have this problem
with the data source. Frankly, my IT guy does not know how to fix the
problem other than to uninstall Office
2003 and install Office 2000.

Any assistance would be appreciated to fix this problem.

Thank you,

Karminak