Mail merge to draft in outlook 365

Dear @Simon Conway,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

To help me narrow down the issue, are you using Classic Outlook or New Outlook?

Mail merge support is limited/in-progress. Microsoft lists Mail merge as only partially available in the new Outlook compared to Classic, and it’s still on the product roadmap rather than fully feature‑complete. For reference: Feature comparison between new Outlook and classic Outlook

Currently, offline works differently. The new Outlook has partial offline support (read/compose, queue to Outbox, etc.), but the old one‑click “Work Offline” workflow doesn’t cover the same automation scenarios Word used with Classic Outlook.

For more information, please refer to Work offline in Outlook

Recommend Workaround: Using Classic Outlook

In this case, if your goal is to generate messages into Drafts (or at least queue them without sending), do the merge with Classic Outlook, then switch back to the new Outlook for everything else.

Moreover, I completely agree that the ability to send mail merge outputs to Drafts before sending is an important feature, especially for scenarios where you need to add attachments or make individual edits. Many users rely on this workflow for accuracy and personalization, and its absence in the new Outlook can be a real limitation.

Therefore, I highly recommend you submit your feedback directly to Microsoft. To ensure your feedback reaches the right teams, I highly recommend submitting your feedback directly to Microsoft Ideas · Community, where our product development team can know your requirements and ideas for product improvements. If enough users raise ticket for the same idea, Microsoft may consider adding this feature in the future. 

Note: As Microsoft Community moderators, please note that we are not involved in product design decisions and do not have direct access to the development roadmap, we want to assure you that your feedback has been acknowledged and is valued.  

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I'm looking forward for your reply.

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To execute a mail merge to email, you must use Outlook Classic

The “New Outlook is just a re-badged version of Windows Mail and like its predecessor, it does not support automation and hence will not send the messages created by mail merge in Word.

If that is what you are using, you will need to switch to the original Outlook by using the toggle switch at the top right of the Outlook Window

If you do not see the above toggle, the toggle for Outlook Classic may be under Help:

Take a look at these two pages:

You can't open classic Outlook on a new Windows PC - Microsoft Support

Use Classic Outlook, not New Outlook

You may want to try using my Merge Tools Add-in that is contained in the MERGE TOOLS ADD-IN.zip file that you can download from:

https://mergetoolsaddin.com/

Extract the files from the archive and read the:

“READ ME – Setting up and using the Merge Tools Add-in.pdf

to see how to install and use the various tools.

Using those tools, it is possible to perform the following types of merge that cannot be done with Mail Merge “out-of-the-box”:

• Merge to e-mail messages either with or without attachments, with the documents created by the merge being sent as either Word or PDF attachments or as the body of the e-mail message .  The email messages can, if necessary, also be sent to CC and BCC addresses and the subject of the message can include data from a field in the data source.
• Merge to individual documents in either Word or PDF format with the filenames being supplied by the data in one of the fields in the data source
• Many to One type merges, which can be used for creating documents such as invoices where there are multiple records in the data source that have common data in one of the fields
• Merging to a document that will include a chart that is unique to each record in the data source
• Merging a document with Content Controls
• Merging a document that contains Legacy FormFields
• Duplex Merges
• Merging to a printer that will collate and staple the output created from each record in the data source.

The requirements for using the system are:

• The mail merge main document must be of the Letters type, though that does not mean that the output cannot be sent as an e-mail message where relevant.
• For the Many To One, Merge with Attachments and Merge to Individual Docs utilities, the data source may be either a table or query in an Access database, or in the form of an Excel worksheet. For the Chart Merge utility, see the Mail Merging with Charts document that is included in the Merge Tools Add-in Zip file for additional requirements for the data source for use with that utility
• For a data source in the form of an Excel worksheet, the field names must be in the first row of the worksheet and there must be a field name in all of the cells in that row that are within the range of columns that contain the data.
• For both types of data source, the field names must contain only alphanumeric characters (No @,#,$,%,&,(,), etc) and the field names must not start with a numeric character (0-9). The number of characters in the field names, including spaces, must not be more than 40.

The MergeTools Add-in will NOT work with the “New Outlook”, which is just a re-badged version of Windows Mail and like its predecessor, it does not support automation and hence will not send the messages created by the MergeTools Add-in.

Be aware, that any messages that you had tried to send with the “New Outlook” will have been placed in the Outbox of the original Outlook and they will be sent as soon as you revert to that version of Outlook.   If you do not want that to happen, you should put Outlook Off-line, or disconnect your computer from the Internet.

For a demonstration of the use of the facility, prepared by a Microsoft employee, see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj_s3cdfVDY