Contacts and missing mail merge fields

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Guest

I use a 3rd party program to import contact records into Outlook 2003. I
have 2 problems with this. 1) When I try to use the contact created in Word
for a merge or a simple envelope, the city and state don't appear. 2) It
appears that the software doesn't use a hard return and the address lines
appear as one big line. Both issues are resolved if I manually delete the
information and then reinsert it, but I can't do this for 1000s of contacts.
Is there any fix I can run to correct these problems?
 
Import your contact records from what kind of file? How are the fields
mapped (or is this built into the program you're using?) How does Outlook
display the address on an individual contact basis forgetting about mail
merge (specifically - do the city/state appear in their respective fields?
Do the street address lines show correctly within Outlook itself?)

Without knowing more about your data file/structure etc - hard to make any
suggestions or know where the actual problem is coming from.

Karl

__________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0
"Power contact importers for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 
Unfortunately the mapping is built into the program. When I open a record in
Outlook, the city, state and zip do appear in their respective fields. The
country, when used, does not. As for the address, it all runs on one line.
For example, rather than having a street address on one line and the suite
number on another (address 1 and address 2 on seperate lines) it shows the
bits of information on one line.

If it helps, we use a program called iSync that exports records in the iMIS
database program into Outlook. I've tried speaking with the software maker,
but they seem to think it's a Microsoft issue.

If delete (for example) the city, save the record, insert the city again and
save it then it works.

Thanks for your help!
 
Not really familiar with iMIS so can't be of much help there. In terms of it
being an "MS" issue - well I'll go out on a limb on that one - highly doubt
it given the info you've provided so far. If data is properly structured by
the program importing the data - have never yet seen this to be an issue
(and our products have been/are being used to import a whole LOT of contacts
over the years by a whole lot of different people using a lot of different
input file formats).

Technically.............any vendor/product can say anything is an
Outlook/Microsoft issue if it doesn't work the way their program does. The
real issue is whether or not any vendor/product correctly imports data into
Outlook the same way Outlook would deal with it. Seems to me that this
should be more of a question of iSync(or whomever) saying they have no
issues importing the data correctly into Outlook so it can be used just as
if you manually added the info. If that's the case - that would imply the
problem is related to your specific data. However, from what you wrote - not
sure that is what's being said to you. Sounded more like what you're being
told is "we're exporting correctly but it's Outlook (MS) that has the
problem". If so, you may be out of luck until the import program gets fixed.

There is a resource center for iMIS accessible only to registered users. You
may want to check to see if there are any export tools that are available to
you to selected specific data out of the database into something like a .CSV
or TAB file. If you can get your data out - then you can use Outlook's own
import wizard (if you're not using any custom fields - else would need a 3rd
party product).

Karl
__________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0
"Power contact importers for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 
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