InDesign 2024 Crashes on second mail merge

[realistic_workmanship15A7]

This is making me crazy.   It did it on the previous version as well.     I create a document, add mail merge fields then save and merge.  No problem.  The second time I open the document and mail merge, ID crashes.   I am using Win 11, ID 2024, Tab separated values in a .txt file.     I merge to a PDF file.

Any suggestions?   I do a monthly newsletter and it drives me crazy that I have to recreate the basic template each time I want to merge. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What if you merge to INDD document first and then export PDF - instead of directly to a PDF?