Hi I am trying to do a mail merge from Excel in to Word. My excel document contains a column of different product names and each product name is hyperlinked to a specific web address. I know how to add a hyperlink and then include the appropriate mail merge field once I'm in Word, but my problem is that after I complete my merge, all of the links are exactly the same as the link initially used when inserting the hyperlink in Word. How can I do a merge in to Word and also pull over all of the various links??



THANKS!

Hi chay,

By default, if you insert a mailmerge field into a hyperlink field, the hyperlinks will all show the first record’s address as the 'Text to display' text (though the actual links should go to the correct address after you update the document's fields). Here's how you can do get a mailmerge to display your preferred default 'Text to display' text instead:
1. Disregarding mergefield issues for the moment, insert a hyperlink into the document in the normal way, choosing whatever 'Click Here' text you want in the 'Text to display' box.
2. Select the inserted hyperlink and press Shift-F9 to expose its field code.
3. Replace everything in the field after 'HYPERLINK' with your mergefield.
4. Select the field and press F9 to update the display.

In Word 2007 & later, you can make the display text variable also, by following these additional steps:
5. Position the cursor anywhere within the display text.
6. Insert a mergefield pointing to whatever data field you want to use for the display text (this could even be the same field as used at step 3 above).
7. Delete all of the previous display text either side of your last-inserted mergefield (note that this field will likely have updated already).
8. Execute the merge.
9. After merging to a new document, use Ctrl-A, F9 to update all fields. Without this, the mergefield hover text won’t update to the correct targets.

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

That did not work. One of two things happened....either nothing linked, or all of the links were the exact same. I am using Word 2013. Does that matter? Perhaps step by step screen shots would help.

Thanks!

Try it with just steps 1-4. It's possible Word 2013 has reverted to the old behaviour.

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

Paul,

I know you are tired of answering these mailmerge with different hyperlinks questions, but I've tried everything I could find in the forums with no luck.

I tried inserting a hyperlink, showing the code, and inserting the mergefield name (send_link). The result looks like this:

{ HYPERLINK Send_Link }

After the merge, the originally posted hyperlink comes up for all of the letters.

Can you help?

Thank you very much,

Shea

Hi Shea,

I've been OS for 3½ months, hence the delay in replying. Have you resolved the issue, or do you still need help?

FWIW, your process description suggests you haven't followed the directions I posted - your modified hyperlink field should have looked like:
{HYPERLINK «Send_Link»}
or:
{HYPERLINK {MERGEFIELD Send_Link}}

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