Allow mailmerge using SharePoint (and/orOneDrive) based lists and document
Allow Office 365 Word/Excel mailmerge functionality when the files are stored on SharePoint (Online or on-premises).
As per: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msofficesharepoint-msowinother-msoversion_other/word-mail-merge-with-excel-document-in-a/81cd913e-9a57-4bf8-99ca-a766b57b2531
The Office client people I know seem to think this is a SharePoint Online limitation, while the SharePoint people seem to think the Office client team need to sort this.

19 comments
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C. Orr commented
Our IT department is pointing all of the users to OneDrive and Sharepoint by default. I can get graphical reports from Sharepoint via PowerBI (what a hassle to pick out only the spreadsheets I need when 25 users have been using the site for 3 months, though!) and I can still get to the file servers via the VPN but at this rate I will soon be unable to mass-produce letters, personalised feedback reports and emailed appointments. We will have to go back to the 1980s and re-employ a typing pool!
Genuine question: How come PowerBI can retrieve data from Excel files on Sharepoint, but Word can't? -
Roland commented
Que c'est nul qu'on ne puisse pas faire du publipostage depuis une source en emplacement http, notamment pour les entreprises sur leur réseau perso intranet..???
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Barstow Phillips commented
This is a widely used function for our administrative assistants. Having to download the file first is not intuitive or convenient and syncing the entire document library is not feasible (128 GB for most workstations). Our users end up downloading the Excel document or adding it to their OneDrive and they no longer receive the updates others contribute.
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Caty Hespel commented
I read a suggestion by a microsoft moderator that syncing the library would solve the problem, but this is not an option in my case as this library contains thousands of sensitive personel files that should not be stored on local computers.
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dario commented
Mail merge da Share point, e' una funzione importante per non dover sempre fare il download in locale dei file per il mail merge
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GODIN commented
Hi,
This should be a great progress in this COVID time ... -
Pia commented
I'm so frustrated that this cannot be done. At my workplace we need to use the Sharepoint option for the excel-file but it now seems that we cannot create a mail merge ...
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Ben W commented
Ditto
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Carlos Morales Lemus commented
Hi,
Please enable functionality "Allow mailmerge using SharePoint (and/orOneDrive) based lists and document". -
Anonymous commented
Bonjour,
Je souhaiterais pouvoir réaliser des publipostages entre des tableaux excel et word.
Merci d'avance -
Sarnst commented
unfortunatly this is still an issue in Office365. When synching the doc lib it work refering to the XLS on the machine... however no one else can open then the word doc... We have teams who need to Share as that's the whole point :-)
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Shoaib commented
I have a similar issue. I agree that OneDrive sync works but it only works for one individual. I have a mail merge Word file with Excel dataset that my team use. It was working fine when our data was on the local server but since we moved to SharePoint, the links stopped working. I updated links for my machine's OneDrive synced copy now and it works for me but my team can't use it as their OneDrive synced copies have different address of the Excel dataset.
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Rob Short commented
We use the OneDrive sync client to sync the doc lib containing the Excel file sync'ed locally. Then we can browse to the file and use it for merging. Agreed it would be useful to be able to do it natively without using the sync client though but by no means is this not doable.
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Rob Nicholson commented
I'm not sure which team is responsible for the Excel/Access ODBC connector - could be Windows 10 team, could be Office team
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Rob Nicholson commented
I don't think this is an SharePoint document library issue as such as there are obviously functions available to allow Office to open documents from SharePoint. However, mail merge appears to use a Windows function to interface in with the data source - guessing maybe ODBC as that's used to interface databases with mail merge. So I'm guessing that it's the Excel/Access ODBC connector that can't handle HTTP based documents: https://i.imgur.com/jDp6MO7.png
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Rob Nicholson commented
I am totally and utterly flabbergasted that Word/Office cannot use mail merge when the source Excel document is stored in SharePoint. When I user asked me about this, I thought "Of course, it'll work" but when I try it, you a) can't browse SharePoint and b) if you have a network location mapped (WebDAV), you can't use that either.
Office 365 is Microsoft's cash cow these days but there are still so many features that don't work.
Come on Microsoft - you are in control of Office, Office 365 and the operating system. This is such a basic requirement.
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Jeanine E. Leary commented
This would be such a great addition, we use SharePoint list for new hire onboarding and I create a "Welcome Letter" via Mail Merge. As of now, I have to export the list as a CSV file and save as and then run my merge. Too many steps. Want to be able to finish my FLOW to do this automatically!
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Andy commented
Are there any plans to do this?
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Mergim Esati commented
Wow, I can't believe this hasn't been done yet.