Microsoft Word Mail Merge Error – Update All Labels

I encountered a strange error today while helping someone create a Christmas card mailing list.  My friend is using a 4 month old HP Touchscreen PC running Vista. (Doesn’t matter what version, but it’s completely up to date on Microsoft updates.) Additionally, they are running Microsoft Word 2007. He updated all of his contacts in Outlook, and then we ATTEMPTED to use the Mail Merge Wizard from Word 2007.

What happened? Only the top three labels and two bottom labels were updated when we selected “Update All Labels”.

Strange behavior. I tried recreating the error on one of my machines, but the merge worked fine. It turns out there’s a bug in Microsoft’s tablet PC code that keeps the fields from updating. The error has been around for years and it is still not fixed. It took a bunch of searching on the web, but here’s the Microsoft article about it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898630

Update All Fields will fail if you have a tablet PC and are running Vista or Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 and any version of Microsoft Word.

Here’s Microsoft’s workaround:

To work around this issue, follow these steps:

1. When you are on step 4 of 6 in the Mail Merge wizard, tap the Tablet PC Input Panel icon on the Taskbar to open the Tablet PC Input Panel.

   Note If you are running Windows Vista on a Tablet PC, select the keyboard icon at the upper left of the Tablet PC Input Panel.

2. Tap Func to display the function keys on the upper row of the keyboard.
3. Tap inside the first label of the mail merge document.
4. Tap F6. This sets the focus from the mail merge document to the Mail Merge task pane.
5. Tap the arrow key until you select Update all labels.
6. Tap the Spacebar to enable Update all labels.

All labels on the page are updated with both the Next Record field and the AddressBlock field.

Good luck with your mail merges. Additionally, I wonder if this is still an issue in Windows 7. My guess is that it’s a bug that still isn’t fixed…