mailmerge not using recipient list

[jmcsa3]

i'm a first time user of mailmerge. I'm running ms office 365 on windows 10. I want to email a word document to multiple users. I do not want to use Outlook's group mailing feature. I do not need the merging feature, I just want to send the document without additions. My data source for email addresses is a named range in an Excel sreadsheet. I have successfully created and can edit a recipient list in Word. I have followed all the step by step wizard provided from the ribbon. I have tried it using the appropriate ribbon commands. I've even tried recording a macro. Either way when I get to the last step I get a message box reqesting a recipent and other data. The inputbox in the message window shows the first email of my recipient list and is anyway "greyed out". If i resort to the Finish and Merge ribbon command I get an error msg telling me that an email can't be sent without an addessee.
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