Filtering Mail Merge Data (XP)

[sanora]

I'm learning how merges have changed - playing with dummy data and pushing things. I'm running into problems filtering the data file - I click the drop-down control and select one of the available entries - and nothing happens. The drop-down control stays black, showing nothing is going to happen! Or I filter successfully and then clicking the control and choosing (All) does not return the entire list. Sometimes closing the form letter without saving and opening again "fixes" things but not always. Is this quirky or is it just the phase of the moon?
Thanks

[WendellB]

We've seen some "peculiar" things happen with Mail Merge data in WordXP - have you installed SP1? The fix list for it doesn't indicate any specific fixes in this area, but fix lists often are incomplete in my experience. What you are experiencing may also be affected by the data source - is it a text doc, excel spreadsheet, Outlook contact list, or Access database?

[sanora]

The document and data are tests - created the data source there in Word, so it's saved as an .mdb file. Nothing very unusual about it - Word's default fields plus one added numerical field. It all worked as it should have until I came back to do it one more time to be sure I had the steps down correctly.

[WendellB]

I suspected you were using an Access data source - that's where we've had most of our trouble. Do a search on Mail Merge as there was a recent post about problems with the default method of doing merges in XP. There is a switch setting that will revert you to DDE instead of OLEDB - it's slower, but reliable. And you might want to look at installing SP1 if you haven't.