Hi Macropod, and thanks for the response.

Not sure what happened with the images - the links are to my google photos - the fist is just a screenshot of the dialog asking to select a profile - only one option available - Outlook, and the second is the Error message which states "unable to obtain list of tables from the source data", so your not missing much by not seeing them...

I know I can use Word to mail merge from a CSV file from any source, not just gmail, but what I am trying to do is set up Outlook and Word to work together properly as I have been asked to put together some training material for a company showing how to use mail merge - initiated from Word (i appreciate the LOL's given I cant set up Outlook and Word to play together in the first instance!!!). The issue I have is I cannot get it to work on my personal computer as I am not on a business server.

So -in short:
Installed Office - Check
Setup gmail account as default account on Outlook - Check
Sync mails successfully - Check
Create contacts in CSV file - Check
Import into Outlook successfully with fully mapped fields - Check

Start Word mail merge - check
Setup base document for merge - check
Select Recipients from Outlook - ERROR

As stated in my first post - I can successfully run a mail merge if initiated from Outlook, so the data is not corrupt, it appears to be a connection issue from Word to Outlook...

Thanks again for the response - I will continue struggling until I solve this.
GreenBoy