Image: Screen capture from Microsoft Word 2007

I’ve been spending lots of time working on some mail merge documents for a client lately. One of the tasks we’ve accomplished is to embed a logo into the header of the document that changes based on another mail merge field that’s pulled into the document.

Everything works great except for one problem, the image always comes up as a broken image link with the red-x displayed where the image should be.The user has to do the following steps to make it work:

1. Double-click on the header to open it for editing
2. CTRL+A to select everything in the header
3. F9 to force refresh the fields

After the user does this the correct image displays as expected and the mail merge finishes up beautifully. The only problem is that the user has to perform this manual step each time and increasing the manual steps for a user to complete is never helpful or encouraged whenever it should be possible to eliminate those steps.

Image: Screen capture from Microsoft Word 2007

I know in the configuration of the INCLUDEPICTURE field that there’s the checkbox for "Data not stored with document" which we have checked.

Note: There’s a whole different issue about why the Insert form above isn’t located anywhere near the "Mailings" tab in the UI Ribbon. We won’t go into that though.

The problem again is that I can’t figure out a way to force refresh these fields.

A friend pointed me to this blog entry for Word 2003 Header and Footer Field Refresh for Multiple Section Documents. I thought was going to give me what I was looking for but it doesn’t seem to be working for me.

I’ve entered the code in as expected but it’s still not working. Anyone have any ideas? I’ve sent a shout out to a couple of folks that work for Microsoft in their Office and Word groups, but haven’t heard anything yet.

Really looking for an elegant and simple solution to eliminate the manual refresh steps by users.

I posted this question about my INCLUDEPICTURE problem on the Microsoft Community forums.

Post from: EveryJoe

Auto-Refresh INCLUDEPICTURE Field in Word 2007 Mail Merge