Office for Mac will no longer mail merge documents to email in HTML format

Anonymous

Word will no longer mail merge documents to email in HTML format (fails with message "Word was unable to mail your document" and "Word could not finish merging these documents or inserting this database"). However Word successfully mail merges documents as text.

Mail merging of HTML documents has worked for many years but seems to be broken in the latest update of Office for Mac

Details:

Word V 16.8 (171210)

Outlook V16.8 (171210)

Existing Profile

Data source: Word Document

Fails on new document with one merge field only (nothing special)

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Thanks @LindsayLindsay

It seems changing the font does affect it. We failing with Caibri, but changing to Cambria seems to make it work.

Thanks for this!

It solved my problem - it's stupid that changing the font from calibri to calibri light solves the problem - Microsoft what are you guys doing?????!!!!

FYI I'm running word 16.18

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Thanks @LindsayLindsay

It seems changing the font does affect it. We failing with Caibri, but changing to Cambria seems to make it work.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Great solution!!! It worked for me aswell !!!

If the Word font is Calibri... "Word was unable to mail your document" error message, and no email is being sent.

But if changing to Cambria, it works again, sending with html format.

But..... why should it not work depending on the word font? It's a bug, even considering that on previous version worked fine.

Please review and amend this bug.

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Anonymous

I'm hoping this helps someone...

Not being able to send HTML emails via mail merge seemed to be caused by the document's font not be tagged as (Body).

When the font was set to Calibri (Body) in Word, the mail merge worked.

When the font was set to Arial, the mail merge did not work, and I got the "Word was unable to mail your document" error that others have gotten.

The HTML DOM has the tags <body></body> -- these are the main tags that house content in an HTML document. This may factor into the DOCX-->HTML conversion process...

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Anonymous

I can confirm I was having the same problem and the font change fixed the problem.

I opened the document, 'Removed the Headers' and once opened, SELECT ALL, change the fonts, saved it, and relinked the document to the original Excel file.

Once this was done, I was able to SELECT ALL, change the font back, and save the document, and the links maintained and the issue doesn't occur again.

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Anonymous

I would suggest that you make sure you have selected the entire word document when you change fonts.

Looking at the success & failure modes, it seems to be simply the inability of the merge to parse the HTML document. By selecting the entire document and changing the font you are essentially rewriting the document in an updated format. This is a guess since I can only look at the success & failure modes reported and can't run any true debug.

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182 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-08-15T21:47:54+00:00

Same problem here: when I select HTML in the Send As field of the Mail Recipient dialog it fails to send. It worked for me back in April and May with (slightly) earlier versions of Word and Outlook, but not now. In those cases I was using the same Excel spreadsheet, but different Word documents.

Current software details:

Word 16.16 (180812)

Outlook 16.16 (180812)

MacOS 10.13.6

It works successfully if I select Text in the Send As field of the Mail Recipient dialog, but then my email looks terrible.

First error message: "Word was unable to mail your document."

Second error message: "Word could not finish merging these documents or inserting this database."

I tried changing fonts without success. I tried copying and then Paste Special as Unformatted text into a new Word doc and re-added all of my formatting without success. I tried copying and then Paste Special as Unformatted text into a new Word doc WITHOUT recreating my formatting and THAT works! But again, then my email looks terrible (similar to Send As Text). So it appears that there is some formatting I am using in this document that the Mail Merge is unable to convert to HTML... BUT, taking the Unformatted text version of the document that I added formatting to and then removing the formatting back out again (step by step, one type of formatting at a time) leaves me with a "plain text" version that STILL doesn't work.

I just tried two of the older successful Word docs, and they still work, so it must be some difference in formatting between this new doc and those older ones, but I can't figure out what it is. Interestingly, another older doc that DID work back in April does NOT work now.

Okay, last test for today: I Command-A copied the contents of the original document and then pasted into a new Word doc as Unformatted text. Started mail merge, linked to Excel, inserted merge field, and sent as HTML - it worked! I then added an underline to a single word and tried again: it worked! So then, thinking underlining is safe, I went through and added underlines to the rest of the doc where I want them - IT NO LONGER WORKS.

I'm stumped. Ideas?
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