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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Answer accepted by question author

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

2018-03-13T04:57:15+00:00

Hi All,

I'd like to summarize the case as below, so everyone can identify the information easily.

===============================

Issue description:

Word 2016 for Mac can't mail merge documents to email in the HTML format.

Current status:

We have fixed the issue in Word 2016 for Mac (16.10 version). However, some users report the issue still exists on their side. We have tested it, but the issue can't be reproduced from our side. Therefore, we need affected users to collect some related trace logs to help us further look into it.

Here the steps to collect logs:

1.Go to Finder -> right click Finder -> click Go to Folder…

2.Type ~/Library/

3.Go to the following folder and there will be a file (.log)

Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Caches/Microsoft/uls/com.microsoft.Word/logs

Once you find the log, you can send it through the Private Message.

We have got updates from some affected users that they have reverted Word 2016 for Mac (16.10 version)to 15.41 version as a temporary workaround. Therefore, we understand it is not convenient for you to collect the logs. For any other affected users who still have the Word 2016 for Mac (16.10 version) on your computer, please help repro the issue and collect the logs. We appreciate your kindly help and patience.

=============================

@GuestUser1, many thanks for your information that insider fast version (16.12) has fixed the issue.

If anyone has already joined into the insider fast program and do see the issue doesn't appear, you are welcome to share the result with us.

Note: Office Insider Fast build is best for Insiders who want to use the earliest preview builds, released more frequently, to identify issues and provide feedback, and who don’t mind a bit of risk using unsupported builds. Please use it as your own risk. To join it, refer to this article: What is Office Insider?

Best Regards,

Sky
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