Can’t send a catalog … to a printer

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I’ve built a dummy Word document that will create a “catalog” with merge fields that get their data from an Excel file. The Excel sheet has just four records. I went through the steps, and I can preview the four pages in Word. When I try to print the pages, however, I get an error message box.

40384-MergeError

Huh? I thought the whole purpose of a mail merge is to print out multiple documents. What’s this mean?

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To work around this problem, follow these steps:

1.Open the catalog main document.
2.On the Mail Merge toolbar, click Merge to new document.

After the merge has completed to a new document, you can send the merged document to a printer, electronic mail, or electronic fax.

Error message: Cannot send catalog merge document directly to mail, fax, or printer (KB211763)

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I don’t see “Merge to new document,” so I proceeded to customize the ribbon by adding the command button. Well, the customize dialog said I have to add a “new group” to the ribbon. Did that, and then added the command “Mail Merge to new document.” Now I have the new group, and when I click on it I get the button to merge to a new document. I click on it, but nothing happens. BTW, I’m using Office 365. What must I do?

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A-ha! I knew there had to be a way … . Now, wouldn’t it make sense for this message box to give some helpful information—such as what you just wrote—instead of that “you can’t get there from here” stuff!

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After nothing happens, can you print?

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No. I get the same un-helpful message I cited earlier.

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I got the document to print, but I had to switch to my MacBook Pro and Word for Mac 2011. There I found the button we’ve been talking about in the mail merge manager. Go figure … .

I still need to figure out how to do this in Word 2013 (Office 365).

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I think in Word 2013 you click Finish & Merge on the MAILINGS tab of the ribbon, then Print Documents which produces a Merge to New Document (All/OK) dialog box.

(See from 1:49 at the end of this video: How to use Mail Merge in a Microsoft® Word 2013 document)

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