Mail Merge Problems - Cannot pull up Defined Name in Word as I should be able to

[Verdania]

My first post! Any help is appreciated. I'm using Excel 2010.

I'm trying to mail merge just a portion of 1,890 addresses. In Excel, I successfully highlight and save the wanted addresses as a defined name. Then, in Word, after the Confirm Data Source dialog step and in the Microsoft Office Excel dialog box where you select "Named or cell range" my defined name does not appear. I can only get it to merge the entire 1,890-entries-long document.

I have been at this for hours reading help docs and watching tutorial videos on YouTube (which have been helpful) but I cannot figure out why my document is not doing what the Excel help doc says it should. I could cut and paste the wanted addresses into a new document but why do that if I don't have to and when there is already a function to avoid doing just that?

Any help is appreciated!

[macropod]

Hi verdania,

Have you saved the workbook after defining the named range?

[Verdania]

Good suggestion - I tried it and it was a no-go though. I've gone through all the different ways to pick a list and cannot recreate what Excel says it should do. *shrug* CTRL-V it is I guess..

[macropod]

Hi verdania,

Perhaps the easiest way to manage this is to add another column to your Data, named 'Output', with 'Yes' for all records to be output. You can then add a SKIPIF field to your mailmerger main document to skip all records for which the 'Output' field's value is not 'Yes'.

[Verdania]

...You can then add a SKIPIF field to your mailmerger main document to skip all records for which the 'Output' field's value is not 'Yes'.

Yes I will do this. Thank you!

Otherwise, what else would you use a Defined Name for? Why be able to create and then not use it?

[macropod]

Hi verdania,

You can use a named range. To do so, set Word to 'confirm conversions at open' when creating the mailmerge main document. You will then get a choice of connection methods and, more importantly for your purposes, a choice of the named range or something else. Do note that, if you're using a named range, whatever is the first row of that range becomes the mergefield header. So, unless your named range includes the headings, you may have problems with the named range approach - it's meant for use in situations such as where there are rows of data in an Excel worksheet before the table that is to be used for the mailmerge. With the SKIPIF method, you don't need to define a range and the records to be output don't have to be in a contguous block.