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MS Office Word 2007 Fails to print merged letter correctly

I have a doctor client who uses MS Word 2007 and a proprietary dental/surgical program named Windent. Windent has standard MS Word letter templates that merge with patient information for form letters such as "Doctor's Excuse" and "Scheduled Appointments". When working within Windent and issuing a command to use a form letter ,Word opens, the Windent DB fields merge correctly, and the letter appears on the screen with the Word message "Merge Successful". Even the print preview looks fine, but as soon as one clicks the print button on screen the letter reverts back to the raw template and will not print the merged data from Windent. It prints the letter body and the fileld names instead of the merged data such as patient name and address.

The doctor admits to opening the template and changing the wording, but claims he only changed the wording of the letter and nothing else, and, he also retained the original file name he says.

Please help!

Joanne M. Orzech

It's quite difficult to troubleshoot problems with third party programs.... having said that, try this:

After the "raw" letter reappears on the screen, go to View, Toolbars, Mail Merge (turn on mail merge toolbar).

Then click the button that says: Merge to New Document....

Just let us know if that re-merges the letter properly.

SMPC

ASKER

Thank you for the suggestion JOrzech. I forgot to mention that we are using MS Word 2007 so I could not find the particular toolbox item you wanted me to check. Does it exist in Word 2007? Further, is there a menu selection in Word 2007 to reset all items for all toolbars to factory default? This used to work for them until the Doc messed around with the Template and changed the wording. I wonder of he accidentally changed the template file name even though the correct one opens and THEN merges with the WINDENT data?
I did notice one other thing. When I opened the below files in order to save them the "After merge' file defaulted to a Word '03 (.doc) file when I did the "Save As" command. The other file, the 'Raw" file" that the merged file regresses to after hitting the print button defers to a .docx file when I used the "Save As" file command.
Thanks so much for your continued consideration.
(The attached files reflect composite 'test' patient information and are not actual patients and do not reflect actual communications - as per HIPAA)

Example-of-post-merge-and-pre-pr.doc
Example-of-Pre-merge-and-Post-pr.doc

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Joanne M. Orzech

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SMPC

ASKER

Thanks JOrzech! I will try this outr tomorrow and let you know. If it does not work I will gather some more information and go from there. Mike

Joanne M. Orzech

OK Mike - best of luck! Let me know if I can be of assistance....

Joanne
Word MVP