[Solved] Missing Mail Merge Email Option

csrobins · Post by **csrobins** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:33 pm

Hello everyone,

First of all, I'm using version 2.4.0.4 in Mandriva 2008.1.

I'm trying to set up an email mail merge, but I've been running into problems.
First I couldn't get Ooo to recognize my jre, but I finally got that sorted out, but now the problem seems to be that Ooo doesn't detect an "appropriate email service" so that the email options for mail merge are missing. I have thunderbird and kmail installed, and I can use Writer to send emails with thunderbird as attachments, but the mail merge is not there. I've looked everywhere, but I can't find anything about this except that back in version 2.0.1 (I think) this "feature" was added to remove the email option if an email service was missing.

Any ideas of how to fix this? If no one has a solution, I think I'll try reinstalling Ooo, but I wanted to check here first.

Post by **acknak** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:01 pm

Email merge has nothing to do with TBird or KMail. Those are mail clients: the software that receives your message and allows you to read or send a message.

For an email merge, OOo is itself the mail client; what it needs is configuration telling it how to contact your mail server.

The merge process should detect that you haven't configured the server settings, and offer to let you do so. If it doesn't offer that for some reason, look in Tools > Options > OOo Writer > Mail Merge E-mail, and you can set them there yourself.

csrobins · Post by **csrobins** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 3:17 am

Ok, I checked the options, but the email related option I can set is which client to use for sending attachments. The Mail Merge Email option is missing, likely for the same reason that it is missing from the Mail Merge Wizard. Is it possible that I'm missing an email module or something, and that the version of Ooo I have is tweaked a bit by the Mandriva people? Or that I need to edit some configuration file somewhere to activate it?

Post by **acknak** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:03 am

Sorry, I'm not sure what might cause the config section to be missing. Are you sure your Java is working correctly?

I don't know why anyone might remove the function, but it may be split off into a separate package. Check that you have all of your distribution's OpenOffice packages installed, or remove them and use package from OO.org.

That's all I can think of for now...

csrobins · Post by **csrobins** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 2:55 pm

So I tried installing just about every package in the software manager for mandriva (except all the language packs and clipart), but to no avail. I tried reinstalling writer, but it didn't do anything, so I'm downloading 2.4.1 from OO.org

I've noticed another problem with my Ooo though, whenever I add a database it works the first time, but if I want to use it again after that, I have to add it again, selecting the existing database doesn't do anything. Any ideas? Hopefully installing 2.4.1 will fix my problem. The java version I'm using is 1.6.0_06 by the way.

csrobins · Post by **csrobins** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 4:16 pm

So I installed version 2.4.1 from Oo.org and everything works fine now. Must have been something with the Mandriva version of Ooo. I have no idea why they would not include the email merge module or a way to install it, but at least it works now. It even fixed my problem with the databases. Interface looks a little different now though, but it's okay. Thanks for the suggestions.

Post by **TheGurkha** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:20 pm

The versions of OOo that come with the various Linux distro's have all been tweaked in some way or other. I prefer to get the Sun build and install that.

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