Mail merge error when a data source is accessed by multiple users in Word
Article
Applies to:
Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2019, Word 2013, Word 2016, Word 2010
Symptoms
Consider the following scenario:
You try to open a mail-merged document in Microsoft Word 2010, Word 2013, or Word 2016.
The data for this document is a Microsoft Excel worksheet (*.xlsx) that's stored in shared folder.
The document has already been opened.
In this scenario, you receive the following error message:
Error has occurred: External table is not in the expected format.
Cause
When you store an .xlsx file in a shared folder and use it as data source in a Word mail merge, Word opens the .xlsx file exclusively. If another user tries to open a Word file that uses the same data source simultaneously, only read-only permissions can be granted, and therefore the request fails.
Workaround
To work around this issue, use a .csv or .xls file instead of an .xlsx file as the data source. For example, open your data source in Excel, and then save it as an Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.XLS) or CSV Comma Delimited (*.CSV) file.
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