Mailmerges and custom menus

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I have a letter template with a custom menu called ‘actions’ which used to do special printing and inserting watermarks (plus others). If I create a doc from this and use it in a mailmerege and then merge to new document, the custom menu does not appear in the merged documents. Is there any way round this ?

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I wonder if it would work if you used the organiser to copy the action menu and associated macros across to Normal.dot? The only thing is it wouldn’t be so useful if you didn’t want the action menu to be available in all documents.

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Unfortunately storing items in the normal.dot is not an option. I just wondered if anyone else has had the problems with this becuase it seems like oversight on Microsoft’s part.

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Hi Matt:

I haven’t tried this, but when you do a mailmerge through the wizard, Word offers you an option to create a new main document or use the active document. If you first open a document based on your template & use it as the main document, does it make a differnce?

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I imagine the main document is already based on the template and that when the merge is run and Word puts all the letters into a brand new doc based on Normal.dot that the trouble starts. How appropriate is it to simply use the merge to a new doc feature to check for errors, layout etc. but then to bravely merge direct to the printer once you’re sure everything is ok?

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I never came across this, but it seems Suzanna’s right, when merging to a new document, word ignores the template of the merge document, and bases the new document on normal.dot only. There is likely a more elegant way to do this, but how about creating a non-printing macrobutton on the main document that would then appear in the new merged document. The macro executed by the button would simply attach the letter template to the active document.

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Greetings from NZ
I got around a similar problem by placing a template that contained the special menu items and related scripts in the startup directory

Regards
Geof

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Another option… In the merged result, click on Tools / Templates & Add-Ins / Add and browse to the location of your template. If you’re unsure where that is, before visiting Templates & Add-Ins, go to Tools / Options / File Locations and see where your WorkGroup Templates and User Templates are pointing… it will be in one of those locations.

Once you’ve placed the item in your Temp & Add-Ins list, you can turn it on and off as needed.

HTH

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Ah, Karen . . .

. . . a quasi global template!

Good idea.

Art

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It’s a cheat I use frequently… in fact, to increase my start-up speed I have a global template in my start-up with a toolbar which toggles the loading and unloading of my add-ins as needed. Since I am very careful (read as neurotic) about not saving my normal.dot the only thing that loads on start-up is that template and normal (which contains only my defaults such as margins, fonts, my base styles (which, by the way, are copied in a separate template if I need to rename normal so I can use organizer to copy). If I record/write a macro it goes into one of my other templates.

I am an not the most patient of individuals so start-up speed is a priority, and I hate reinventing the wheel so I have 2 backup copies of each of my templates.

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Thanks for the replies. Global templates again albeit solve the a problem it is not feasible in our environment. The only reliable way to get round this is to actually save the mailmerged document (space issues come nicely into play now) and re-open it, viola the menu is back.
Not sure but I still believe Microsoft missed this one along quite a few issues we have picked up on after migrating to Word 2000. Thanks again for responses.

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Karen,

I’m going to incorporate it into my installation. Right now, I have a global template called ToolbarToggles which I use to turn all of the various toolbars on and off as needed. Seems like a good place to put your TemplateToggles.

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Hi Matt,

Do you have SR1 installed?

If not then take a look at this article from the MS KB:
“Custom Toolbar Disappears After Mail Merge”
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ar…s/Q238/3/92.ASP?
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Cheers!

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Thanks for the link but unfortunately SR1 is standard through our firm where this happens. It would appear KB article is fibbing (not for the first time I must add) but I am suprised it doesn’t recommend me to upgrade to XP.

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Hi Matt,

I don’t have Word 2000 installed right now to check this out, but if there is an error in the KB article there are avenues for reporting them that actually work!

One idea that I didn’t see mentioned in all of the suggestions is to create a macro to use for Mail Merge that attaches the completed merge doc to your template.

Here is just a simple one that I recorded that works in Word 97:

Sub MacroForMailMerge
With ActiveDocument.MailMerge
.Destination = wdSendToNewDocument
.Execute
End With
With ActiveDocument
.UpdateStylesOnOpen = False
.AttachedTemplate = _
“Normal.dot”
End With
With ActiveDocument
.UpdateStylesOnOpen = False
.AttachedTemplate = _
“C:Program FilesMicrosoft Office” _
& “Templatesmerge.dot”
End With
End Sub

Since the document is already attached to Merge.dot, I attached to Normal.dot and then back to the Merge.dot again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cheers!

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