Mail Merge not working on Big Sur

Question

Mail Merge not working on Big Sur

Attitudex2 1

I recently received a new iMac running Big Sur 11.6. I have many mail merged word documents that read data from an xlsm file. This worked just fine on the older iMac with an older OS. Now, when I attempt to start the mail merge, I get the error "This workbook contains unreadable content and cannot be opened". The workbook opens just fine in Excel on the MAC. I am using version 16.54 in both Word and Excel.

ScrappyScott 1 Reputation point

2022-03-09T23:23:26.637+00:00

You cannot run a Word mail merge using a macro-enabled Excel workbook unless you follow the instructions below.

Yesterday, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to use an xslm file as the data source for a Word mail merge. It was critical because I had a macro in the file that had to be run for the merged document to look right (I was developing a Word doc to use for printing checks and needed a function that would convert numbers to spelled out words).
I finally made things work by saving the xlsm file as an xlsx file and linked all the cells in the xlsx file to the corresponding cells in the xlsm file. This way, whenever I needed to update the data source, I would do so in the xlsm file, where my macro would convert the numbers to spelled-out numbers, which then updated the xlsx file.

Here's the one thing you have to remember: After making and saving changes in the xlsm file, you must open the xlsx file, which will update its data to match the data in the xlsm file. Then, I saved the xlsx file, went into the Word merge document, and selected an existing recipient file. In the Word merge document, I selected Mailings>Select recipients>Use an existing list. Next, I selected the updated xlsx file as the new recipient list, and everything worked great.

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ScrappyScott 1 Reputation point

2022-03-09T23:23:26.637+00:00

You cannot run a Word mail merge using a macro-enabled Excel workbook unless you follow the instructions below.

Yesterday, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to use an xslm file as the data source for a Word mail merge. It was critical because I had a macro in the file that had to be run for the merged document to look right (I was developing a Word doc to use for printing checks and needed a function that would convert numbers to spelled out words).
I finally made things work by saving the xlsm file as an xlsx file and linked all the cells in the xlsx file to the corresponding cells in the xlsm file. This way, whenever I needed to update the data source, I would do so in the xlsm file, where my macro would convert the numbers to spelled-out numbers, which then updated the xlsx file.

Here's the one thing you have to remember: After making and saving changes in the xlsm file, you must open the xlsx file, which will update its data to match the data in the xlsm file. Then, I saved the xlsx file, went into the Word merge document, and selected an existing recipient file. In the Word merge document, I selected Mailings>Select recipients>Use an existing list. Next, I selected the updated xlsx file as the new recipient list, and everything worked great.

Answer 1

@Attitudex2

> The workbook opens just fine in Excel on the MAC.

Do you mean you could open this workbook (.xlsm) directly on a new iMac?

Please save this .xlsm files as a .xlsb file, make sure the file name has no special characters.
Then use the new file as your data source to have a check.

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Answer 2

Attitudex2 1

Yes, I did mean that I could open the workbook directly on a new iMac using Excel. I just can't use the workbook as a data source for a mail merge in Word.

I save the xlsm file as an xlsb and attempted to use the xlsb file as a data source for a mail merge, but it failed with the same error "This workbook contains unreadable content and cannot be opened."

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Mail Merge not working on Big Sur

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