mail merge

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Hi, I am working in Word 97 – I made some templates of letters and used the mail merge on them to put some fields into them by the “get data” and now I would like to edit them. The problem is that when I open them, they open as a new document with the name “document 1” and all I want to do is edit the actual template, not the letters that I would be printing. How do I do this without having to go through the whole mail merge process again? I have edited them before when I am doing the original mail merge, but now it seems that I can’t get at the actual template for some reason. I would appreciate any ideas on this.

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The default action when double clicking a .dot file is to create a new file based on it. To open the file itself, either:
1. Right click the file in windows explorer and choose Open (instead of the bolded New)
2. Open Word and then do a File|Open and find the file

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Thanks to Andrew and P O’Rourke for the mailmerge help! For some reason I could only access this thread from going into “show all user’s posts”. I am not sure why. Anyone out there know why? I am new to the site, only my 3rd post, maybe I have a setting wrong on my computer?

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On the main index, you go to Word. I have my profile set to descending date order. That leaves the newest posts on top. Otherwise, you have to guess which page they’re on. You can also click search, & then enter some key words.

Hope this helps.

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You have to open the template (file, open) and do your editing there, as you probably are aware.
Are you on a network where others may be using your templates as well? I’ve had the experience of trying to edit our firm’s templates and not being able to get it because others in the firm are using it.
If the template is not available to you, or it is “read only” it may be that others are currently using the template and you will have to wait until it is not in use (some company’s/firms have software that can boot people out of a document or template they need urgently)!
If necessary you could do your editing in “document 1” then do a Save As and save as document 1 as a new template- delete the old one later or when no one is using it.

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