Drop Down Boxes - Microsoft Word 2010

If you send me a copy of the file, I will investigate the issue.  With Legacy FormFields, it is necessary to protect the document for filling in forms for the formfields to work.

My MergeTools utility has the ability to merge a document that contains formfields.  You must however start with the document unprotected so that you can set the merge document type, which must be the Letter type and attach the data source and then you must use the Protect Merge Form item on the Merge Tools tab of the ribbon to apply the protection.  It will create documents that are saved with a sequential number.

However, unless you want to have the forms personalised for each recipient, it might be better to just save the protected document and then use the Merge with Attachments facility to email the documents to the recipients.  You will need to use that facility with the personalised documents anyway and in that case, you will need to included in the data source the full name (path and filename) of each of the attachments.

You can download the MergeTools – 20140218.dotm Add-in that I created from the following page of my One Drive:

http://bit.ly/1hduSCB

The file needs to be saved in the Word Startup folder.  In Windows XP the default location for that folder is

C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

In Windows Vista and Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 it is

C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

If you do not see the AppData folder: -

In Windows 7, - In Windows Explorer, click on the Organize drop down and then on Folder and search options and in the Folder Options dialog, go to the View tab and select the item "Show hidden files, folders, and drives".  While there, it is a good idea to uncheck the box of "Hide extensions for known file types".

In Windows 8 and 8.1, in the File Explorer, click on Options on the View tab of the ribbon and then on the View tab in the dialog that appears and select the item "Show hidden files, folders, and drives".  While there, it is a good idea to uncheck the box of "Hide extensions for known file types".

When that has been done and Word is started\re-started, the tab shown below will be added to the Ribbon:

One thing to note is that the field names in the data source must contain only alphanumeric characters (No @,#,$,%,&,(,), etc) and the field names must not start with a numeric character (0-9).

You may also want to download: 

1. the Merging with Attachments document that is also on that page which explains how the system is used.  It is not actually necessary to have separate attachments as the facility can be used to send just the documents created by the merge itself as attachments, either as the body of the message itself or in the form of Word files or .pdf files.
   
   
2. the Mail Merging with Charts document that is also on that page.  That document explains how you must set up the Excel Data Source and the Mail Merge Main document to be able to execute a merge with a Chart that is unique to each record in the data source.
   
   
3. the Using the Many to One Facility document that describes how to use that facility.