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_Debbie_Blanchard_
Participant
April 24, 2008
Question

Mail Merge to PDF Mailer

  • April 24, 2008
  • 7 replies
  • 33999 views
When I mail merge from MS Word to Adobe PDF and select "Automatically send pdf files by email", the process works great. HOWEVER, the recipient receives a .dat file, not a pdf. Can anyone help with this issue?
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    7 replies

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    GeoffreySchultz
    Participating Frequently
    March 11, 2010

    I'm still trying to solve this and am exploring other options for e-mail clients.  Bill's comment implies that it might be possible to use a web based e-mail client such as Gmail.  I've searched these forums and can't find any information on doing that.  Is this possible and if so, can anyone shed any light on to how to do this?

    -- Geoff

    A
    Anonymous
    January 10, 2012

    Here is the key..

    You need to disable the fancy outlook RTF format to avoid the winmail.dat / no attachment issue. The only way to do that for 3rd party plugins (acrobat) is to add a registry key.

    For Outlook 2010 (older versions, just change 14 to 10-12)

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences 

    • On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
    • Type DisableTNEF, and then press Enter.
    • Right-click DisableTNEF, and then click Modify.
    • In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
    • Exit Registry Editor.
    • Restart the computer.

    as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958012

    Crazy problem.. I looked a bit foolish having to send my society's emails 3 times, but now things are golden.

    B
    Benny The Ball
    Participant
    July 16, 2020

    That's fantastic - thankyou. I was looking for a solution / workaround for this issue for days. This solution fixed the issue for me.

    G
    GeoffreySchultz
    Participating Frequently
    March 10, 2010

    Well, I seem to be talking to myself, but I'll keep talking in hopes that someone will have an answer and/or this will help someone in the future.

    I uninstalled Outlook on a system that didn't need it and installed Thunderbird 3.0.3.  When I try to do a mail merge, I get "MAPI logon unsuccessful!  Cannot email messages" as a error. Doing a web search for this message returns nothing usable.

    However, if I click on the Acrobat tab in Word and then click on "Create and Attach to an e-mail", it creates a PDF version of the document and opens Thunderbird with the document attached to a blank message.  I can then send the message and receive it with no problems.

    Any ideas?

    -- Geoff

    B
    Bill12
    Inspiring
    March 10, 2010

    The latter may have worked since AA9 introduced some alternative methods of accessing mail clients. This was to avoid the limitations of MAPI as I underestand it. This gives the ability to even deal with packages such as Gmail and other online mail clients. It may be an issue there that was causing a problem before, or maybe Outlook was taking over things that you did not intend. I am not helping, but at least replying so you can see some of us are at least reading your posts.

    G
    GeoffreySchultz
    Participating Frequently
    March 9, 2010

    I understand that Outlook takes the PDF attachment and imbeds it into the Winmail.dat file, which makes it unreadable by non-Outlook mail clients, but I don't understand why Word/Acrobat is using Outlook when it's not my default mail program.  I use Mozilla Thunderbird, but when I did my first Merge to PDF I got an error stating that I hadn't configured an Outlook profile.  I configured an Outlook profile and then sucessfully merged and e-mailed my PDF document, but unfortunately it came through as Winmail.dat.

    So, the questions are:

    1) Is it possible to keep Outlook from encapsulating the PDF file into Winmail.dat?

    2) Is it possible to have Word or Acrobat utilize a different mail client?

    2a) How/where do I configure this?

    -- Geoff

    Added later:  Note that in AA9 Pro I found the Edit/Preferences/Internet/Internet Settings/Programs and Thunderbird is set as the default program for the MAILTO protocol and MAPI.

    G
    GeoffreySchultz
    Participating Frequently
    March 9, 2010

    I've done some more experimenting and realized that if attach the generated PDF file to an e-mail using Outlook that the attachment comes through as filename.pdf.  However, if I use the AA9 Pro Word mail merge, that it comes through as winmail.dat in some programs.  If I read the e-mail using either Outlook or Gmail (that's all that I've tried), both see the attached PDF, but I only see the winmail.dat file if I read it using Thunderbird.

    What's going on?

    -- Geoff

    G
    GeoffreySchultz
    Participating Frequently
    March 10, 2010

    According to an answer in a MS Outlook forum:

    You  typically end up with a .dat if the message was created in .rtf  
    format. (I can't remember the gory details) If it's Acrobat that's  
    creating the messages, perhaps there is an option in Acrobat to use  
    plain text.

    How can I tell what format AA is producing?  Is there any way to specify the format that it uses?

    -- Geoff

    C
    curious_care15A7
    Participant
    April 10, 2009

    Did anyone find a solution to that problem? I'm experiencing the same issue here, but wasn't able to find a solution.

    Best regards,

    Johannes

    S
    soberoi
    Participating Frequently
    April 13, 2009

    This seems to be an issue with the Outlook or with your network. Just to cross check whether its a problem with the mail merge or outlook, try mail merging to PDF while Outlook is offlinei.e not connected to network and look for the messages in the outbox. If there are unsent items with attached PDF's in the outbox then there is something thats not right with your outlook setup.

    Hope this helps!!

    C
    curious_care15A7
    Participant
    April 13, 2009

    I already checked that. The messages in the outbox look good (message body in plain text with attachment). But the messages, I send out and then display with Outlook look the same, which is no surprise as outlook is able to read its own winmail.dat attachment. When I open the same message via webmail or Apple Mail, it only displays the winmail.dat.

    B
    Bill12
    Inspiring
    April 28, 2008
    Sure sounds like an OUTLOOK problem. I gave up on OUTLOOK years back and really am not familiar with it or the related problems. It may be that you need to update OUTLOOK. For testing, I would create a short Excel file that sent things to myself in several instances.
    _
    _Debbie_Blanchard_Author
    Participant
    April 28, 2008
    I have successfully created 98 pdf's from the pdf mailer function. Each email goes into my Outlook outbox. It shows the pdf is attached; however, the recipient does not get the attachment now, either in pdf or dat format. I created a merge document in MS Word 2003, merged data file in Excel. I normally use Lotus Notes as my email program, but have changed that to Outlook as my default email for this to work. What am I missing here?
    B
    Bill12
    Inspiring
    April 25, 2008
    Dat files are a creation of Outlook, not Acrobat. The DAT file is simply a copy of the e-mail and in all these years MS still sends you 2 copies of your mail, at least the last time I checked. Mail merge I would be suspicious of with PDFs this way. Normally when you do a mail merge to a PDF you get 1 PDF that then has to be broken apart to send. If that is true, it may be the route of your problem. One way around this is to create a macro to step through the mail merge list and send one at a time.
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