Mail merge failure (Outlook 2000)

[Caesar3]

I eagerly read Woody's detailed instructions in the two most recent issues of WOW, and I've been eager to impress my wife by addressing the envelopes for our Christmas cards. I followed every step: I put my contacts into a category, then went to Tools > Mail Merge and checked all the right buttons. Everything went fine till I clicked OK. I saw the message that Outlook was launching Word (I'd closed Word earlier, just like Woody said). But then I got this nasty error message: "The operation failed due to network or other communication problems. Check your connection and try again." I tried again and again--even re-booted my computer and tried yet again. Nadda. Any hints? I'm not on a network--everything's right here in my machine. My wife says we're signing and addressing cards tomorrow, no matter what! Help!

[1Blair]

Lucas, I have exactly the same problem. I have done mail merges on previous occasions without much trouble, but yesterday, just like you, I got the same failure message. The only thing I know I've done to my Office installation recently is to install the recommended security upgrades.

Hope someone can help us out.

(My wife, too, was anxious to get the Christmas mail out. I ended up by creating a "name-and-address-only address card in Outlook. Then I filtered my address book using my "xmas" category, and got a list of names and addresses, just as you'd want them on an envelope. Then I wrote a Keytext macro to cut and paste the names into a Word label template. Oh yes, it took me much longer than a mail merge would have done, but my lady wife is pleased!)

Blair

[Caesar3]

Blair: Thanks for the response! I got the job done thusly: I assigned my selected contacts to the Christmas card category, then viewed by category and selected all those entries. Then I copied and pasted the selections into Excel. Then, in Word, I created a label document and merged it with the Excel spreadsheet. It worked, but it involved going through more steps than would have been required by going straight from Outlook to a mail merge in Word. I put my question to the chief computer instructor at the local community college, she didn't know how to solve the problem either. So...our Christmas cards are in the mail, but I still wanna know how to fix this little problem. I'm still searching for an answer....

[Caesar3]

Blair: Got the answer! Well, truth is I haven't tried this yet, but...go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base and look for Q252149. Seems Norton AntiVirus is the root of this problem, and the fix appears to be very simple. Good luck!

[solept]

Caesar3,

Please take a look at the post I made about "Holiday Merging", perhaps you could help me....

Ken