This article provides two solutions to the “The Problem with the Solution to the Problem” – that is putting in merged hyperlink addresses. One of the solutions is to include a macro, which is indeed a kluge. The other is a more reasonable approach (including the mail-merge field inside a hyperlink field) but is almost impossible to guess – especially using the wizard.

The other problem remains – that a mail-merge of plain text email addresses requires an acknowledgement of every single email sent.

Microsoft Knowledge Base article 912679

Unbelieveable.

For future reference, AutoHotKey lets you automate mouse clicks. I have a few neat little scripts, including one that enables and disables the second monitor for my laptop.

http://www.autohotkey.com/

The thing about trusting applications that you use every day, is that if they’ve been hijacked by a macro-virus, then suddenly that application isn’t nearly as trusty as it used to be. I really only want to trust apps to send email while I’m present, and when I approve. But then I’m not trying to spam survey my customers

Also, are you sure you didn’t manage to get the hack working for HTML emails? It seems possible that their hack isn’t complete, but MS’s security is (however unlikely that sounds).

Lastly, you weren’t able to beautify the hyperlink in the HTML? I thought you’d try to wind up with a “Take the survey” link, rather than just displaying the URL.

Great story.

There’s so much here that is indistinguishable from malice that it’s hard to know where to begin.

As far as I’m concerned, Word has no mail merge.