Empty letter after finalizing a form letter

Empty letter after finalizing a form letter

Summary

You may see an empty letter after you've finalized your form letter. If you try manually to finish the mail merge by pressing  Finish & Merge ==> Edit individual Documents...

you may get this error message:

Word found locked fields during the update. Word cannot update locked fields.

Information

There might be locked Microsoft Word fields (DocProperties, Mergefields, etc.) in your form template.

Solution

Open the series letter and  unlock all fields  by pressing  CRTL+A  to select the whole document and afterwards  CRTL + SHIFT + F11  to unlock the fields.

Hint

To lock a field press:  CRTL + F11

Applies To

• Microsoft Word 2003
• Microsoft Word 2007
• Microsoft Word 2010

Microsoft Visual Basic Macro to find the locked field

Sub FindLock()
'
' FindLock Macro
'
Dim iField As Integer
Dim vResponse As Variant

For iField = 1 To ActiveDocument.Fields.Count
	If ActiveDocument.Fields(iField).Locked Then
		ActiveDocument.Fields(iField).Select
		vResponse = MsgBox("Continue Searching?", vbYesNo)
		If vResponse = vbNo Then Exit For
	End If
Next iField

End Sub