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General discussion

Microsoft Word 2008 Mail Merge won't convert Excel xlsx file

Sep 27, 2009 12:26AM PDT

Microsoft Word Mail Merge launches a file converter when using Excel files as the data source. Nothing new about that. However, when using Mail Merge in Word 2008 and an Excel xlsx file as data source under OS X 10.6, the file converter will not recognize the file unless the extension .xlsx is actually appended to the file name. The file converter used by Word 2008 still recognizes xls files with or without the extension appended, as did the file converter used by Word X.

Discussion is locked

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And what's your question?
Sep 27, 2009 12:28AM PDT

Let me think:
- Does this work the same with other users?
- Is this by design?
- Can I change the behavior?
- I hate this, so does anybody know a mail-merge tool that reads xlsx-files without me typing in the extension?
- Will this be corrected in SP1?
Or still something else?

Kees

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Re: What's your question?
Sep 27, 2009 6:48AM PDT

I simply posted this for its potential to benefit someone else who might be having a problem with Mail Merge with Excel files. I presented this to Microsoft and they were able to reproduce the problem on their systems and have now registered this issue as a Reproducible issue and have sent this to their developers to possibly address this in a future update to the application.

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change default
Sep 27, 2009 11:27AM PDT

Each Office program can add the suffix by default (this default is enabled in the save or save as dialog). I always check the box and this way the suffix is always there in Word, PPT or Excel. But your experience is very valuable. It is funny that Apple was not adding suffixes for some time but PC wanted them. This is how I got the habit of adding them automatically. Now, it is the other way around - PC can go without, but Mac OS likes them to be present.

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Thanks
Dec 17, 2011 5:33AM PST

Thanks FLJohnson52. I was going nuts trying to figure out what was going on. This solved it.

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It's the X!
Dec 19, 2011 9:42AM PST

When converting a Word document from an Excel data source to mailing labels, you must re-name your Excel file to the document name and the appendage ".xls" and NOT .xlsx!! This took me a frustrating afternoon to figure out that on a Macintosh Powerbook G4 run on Mac OS X 10.4.11 my Excel workbook will not convert to labels readily unless I renamed the extension .xls. After this, when I opened the Word and Mail Merge and go to Open Data Source, it will read with the .xls! My Word is Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac version 12.2.3

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Are you sure that you have the
Dec 19, 2011 9:05PM PST

MS compatibility pack installed with your version of Office 2008?