In a mailmerge, one would ordinarily want the 'section heading numbers' to re-start at 1 for each recipient. It would look rather odd to have the same content for each recipient numbered differently, with their first heading, for example, reflecting not its position in their letter but their position in the mailmerge sequence.



Given the above, why do you need the 'section heading numbers' to increment and what kind on mailmerge are you performing (eg letter, directory/catalog)?

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I'm using mail merge only to fill data fields within a report, and only one "record" is being used (in other words, it's a single-recipient mail merge with many mergefields). The problem is that the section numbering appears to be fouled up during the mail merge process.

I've fixed the problem, however, using the "List Styles" feature for section numbering. I had to switch some headers (toggle between, say, Heading 3 and Heading 4) to get the numbers to update properly, but that's a minor problem.

In that case, mailmerge is unlikely to have been the cause of your problem.

That said, mailmerge might not be the best tool for this situation - employing a userform that retrieves the data from the appropriate record, then either updates the document directly or updates a set of document properties that are linked to DOCPROPERTY fields in the document might be a better approach.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Given that I already have the mailmerge document as a template, it's unlikely I'll change horses at this point. But for a new report, if I need one, I'll look into this approach. Thanks for the feedback!