Word merge to outlook breaks clickable links

I'm merging a link into word for sending out through
outlook. Because the link is a merge field, not something
typed in, word never gets a chance to format it as a
clickable link before the merged document is placed in
Outlook's outbox.

I can manually edit the resulting e-mails sitting in the
outbox (when my computer is off the network) so that I
trigger the format event that turns the URL into a
clickable link. But I don't want to click into each of
2000 e-mails and do this manually.

Can you think of a command in outlook (or vb?) that would
go through all the e-mails in outlook and trigger the
formatting event that turns URLs into links?

THANK YOU!
Amy Beltaine
Technology Learning Center
Cornell's School of Hotel Administration

Office version? This was fixed in an Office XP service pack.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"Amy Beltaine" <aks3@cornell.edu> wrote in message news:11c401c37eee$029b6340$a001280a@phx.gbl...
> I'm merging a link into word for sending out through
> outlook. Because the link is a merge field, not something
> typed in, word never gets a chance to format it as a
> clickable link before the merged document is placed in
> Outlook's outbox.
>
> I can manually edit the resulting e-mails sitting in the
> outbox (when my computer is off the network) so that I
> trigger the format event that turns the URL into a
> clickable link. But I don't want to click into each of
> 2000 e-mails and do this manually.
>
> Can you think of a command in outlook (or vb?) that would
> go through all the e-mails in outlook and trigger the
> formatting event that turns URLs into links?
>
> THANK YOU!
> Amy Beltaine
> Technology Learning Center
> Cornell's School of Hotel Administration
>

Ah, it's a merged field. I missed that. You can do a fair amount of automation with Word's merge objects but not if you're using Outlook data directly as a source. One possible approach would be to include code to build the data source from Outlook as a table, then do a programmatic merge from that table. I don't know if it's possible to force an autoformat but perhaps someone in the Word mail merge newsgroup would know.

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--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"Amy Beltaine" <aks3@cornell.edu> wrote in message news:ODRuRCSgDHA.3104@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> Thanks Sue for that hint.
> I ran the updates and I'm now fully updated (service pack 2 of office xp
> and the most recent service packs for windows too.
>
> BUT this did not change the clickability of the link.
>
> I think that because it is a merged field, office never gets a chance to
> run the formatting command that turns it into a clickable link.
>
> Is there any want to get into the mail merge process and force an
> autoformat midstream on each resulting e-mail/document?
>
> THANKS!
> Amy Beltaine
> Technology Learning Center
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY
>
>
>
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