You receive a "Requested object is not available" error message when you run a VBA macro during a mail merge in Word 2003 (828499)

SYMPTOMS

When you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro in Microsoft Office Word 2003 that retrieves recipient information from a database, you may receive the following Run-time error message:

Requested object is not available.

CAUSE

This behavior may occur if you use the ActiveDocument.MailMerge.DataSource.Included property in your VBA macro and the database contains fewer than 10,000 records.

Note Databases that contain more than 10,000 records typically do not have recipient information.

WORKAROUND

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To work around this behavior, add the following Show method to your VBA macro:

Application.Dialogs(wdDialogMailMergeRecipients).Show 1000

Note This method will show the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box for one second, and then continue with your macro.