Question : Office 2007 Mail Merge Issue between Word and Access

We have a client who has an Access 2007 database with all her customer mailing addresses.  She then uses Microsoft Word to create labels mail merging from this Access database.

Everything worked fine until she passed 13,000 rows of data in her Access database.  Now when she goes to do a mail merge, not all the data appears in the recipients window (i.e. A - S only).  She has to sort the list from A-Z and do one mail merge, and then sort the list again from Z-A to complete the rest of her mail merge since all the records do not show in one window like they previously did.

Although she runs Office 2007 Professional on MS Vista Business, I tested this issue using her database on my Windows XP Professional machine running Office 2007 and found the same identical problem.

What's going on?  :-)

Answer : Office 2007 Mail Merge Issue between Word and Access

It sounds as though you have a standard Access Mail Merge database. I would open it, and edit the Table "Office Address List" to include one additional field. Something like "Mail Merge" set the data type to Yes/No.

She can then open the table and checkmark those customers that she want included.

Now you can create a query which will only look at those records which have been checkmarked.
1.  On the create tab. Select Query Design
2.  Select the Table which you have modified. and Click Add
3.  Close the Show Table dialog box.
4.  Click the asterisk in the field listing and drag it to the first column in the lower level of the screen.
5.  Locate the Mail Merge field in the field list. Drag it to the second column in the lower level of the screen.
6.  In the same column as the Mail Merge field, click into the Criteria field and type in True.
7.  Save the Query and call it Filtered Addresses.
8.  If you Run the query (Red Exclamation point) you will see only the filtered records.

Then follow these instructions on how to use the Query with Word. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA012336571033.aspx

Hope that helps.
Dawn Crosier
Word MVP