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

Anonymous
2018-01-08T15:34:29+00:00

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)

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-10-20T18:58:36+00:00

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

Was this answer helpful?

20+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-07-12T18:16:16+00:00

Thanks @LindsayLindsay 

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

Was this answer helpful?

10+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-07-27T07:05:59+00:00

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.

Was this answer helpful?

4 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-07-12T17:58:50+00:00

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...

Was this answer helpful?

4 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-08-20T16:21:48+00:00

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.

Was this answer helpful?

2 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2018-08-15T22:26:02+00:00

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.

Was this answer helpful?

1 person found this answer helpful.
0 comments

182 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-06T22:17:17+00:00

    Been struggling for hours with this issue but found a solution to my specific problem. I thought I'd just share it here in case it might help someone. 

    When I started a mail merge to roughly 3000 contacts, it started off well but after contact #800 or so, I got the infamous error message. When I then wanted to start a new mail merge for the remaining contacts, I repeatedly got the same error message no matter what I tried (e.g., start computer in safe-mode, check for updates, get latest plug-ins, delete certain text and images from the word document, etc. etc.). 

    Then I noticed that two of the merge fields contained a special character for the first contact in my Excel list. Both the contact's last name and company name (the two merge fields) contained the character é. When I changed this to a normal e and tried the mail merge again, it worked without any issues (in HTML format). 

    Hope this saves someone some frustrations.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments