Word removed fillable fields when completing mail merge

If you send me a copy of the mail merge main document, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.

Use the Content Control Form Merge of Merge with Legacy Formfields facilities on 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

What kind of fillable fields are you using?

As far as I know, both legacy formfields and Content Controls survive a merge to a Word document just fine.

(I have not tried either in years, I am relying on memory here.)

Are you merging to a new document or trying to merge straight to email attachments as pdf?

Word does not produce fillable PDF Forms. Period.

As far as I know, there is no way to transfer Word formfields or Content Controls directly from Word to pdf format.

The converters, Microsoft's, Adobe's or other's, are not that sophisticated.

You could mark where you want those fields in your Word document with underscores or a series like ?????????? and then use a pdf editor like Adobe Acrobat to create the fillable fields in Adobe.

You could use Content Controls and have people use Word to fill these out. Preferably in the desktop application but they can be filled out in Word Online.

Microsoft Word Online - Work together on Word documents

Content Controls will survive a mail merge.

They have much more power and usefulness when the document is edited in one of the desktop applications than they do when used in Word online or one of the mobile apps.

Thank you Charles - it's more the fact that it fails in Word vs. the conversion from Word to PDF.

That's were it messes me up.