field codes appear when printing document

Question

I have set up a mail merge and merged my documents to separate documents.

1st problem:  When I open the document it is asking me if i want to pull in the data from the database. I thought once merged it becomes detached from the data. I don't have the option in "Options" selected to print only field codes instead of their values.

2nd problem:   When I print the document the field codes appear in the header and footer instead of their values.

Answer 1

What kind of mailmerge is it? The presence of mergefields in the page header suggests you were trying to do a catalog/directory merge. You cannot merge content to the page header with these.

As for the second problem, that suggests you might have Word's 'print field codes instead of their values' option checked. See File|Options|Advanced > Print.

Answer 2

In that case, there may be some corruption in your mailmerge main document. A simple way of fixing such corruption that usually works is:

• go to the end of the document and press Enter to insert a new paragraph

• copy & paste everything except that new last paragraph into a new document

• do the same two steps with your page headers/footers if they don't copy across

• close the old document and save the new one.

As this is a mailmerge main document, you'll need to re-establish the mailmerge data connection. Once you've got the new document working, you can delete the old one.

Answer 3

It's just a regular mail merge connected to an access database on a network. I don't know what a catalog/directory merge is.

I previously looked to see if that option was checked and it wasn't. I did try to check it, then uncheck it to see if it would reset or something.

This is all very bizarre, these docs have been working fine for the past 3 months then all of the sudden they started doing this. I might understand if all of the field codes were printing but it is just the ones in the header/footer. What's most bizare is the field codes don't appear on the document until you print then they appear.

Answer 4

The document that I am working from is not the merge document but the result of a merge document. When I go to the Mailings tab none of the information is highlighted inciating that it is still part of the main merge doc.

Then for the second issue, when i print the document to paper or to a pdf document, both the paper and the pdf show the field codes in the header & footer. All other fields show their values.

Answer 5

I have set up a mail merge and merged my documents to separate documents.

 

1st problem:  When I open the document it is asking me if i want to pull in the data from the database. I thought once merged it becomes detached from the data. I don't have the option in "Options" selected to print only field codes instead of their values.

 

2nd problem:   When I print the document the field codes appear in the header and footer instead of their values.

The first "problem" occurs because it is the mail merge main document that you are opening, NOT a documnet created by actually executing the merge.

To create individual documents, download the MergeTools – 20120609 Add-in that I created from the following page of my Windows Live SkyDrive:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=5aedcb43615e886b#cid=5AEDCB43615E886B&id=5AEDCB43615E886B%21111

For the second problem, if it still exists after using the Merge to Individual Documents facility, use Alt+F9 to toggle off the display of the field codes.