Bug 133792

Summary: Mail merge is not working in version Version: 6.4.4.2 (x64) Build ID: 3d775be2011f3886db32dfd395a6a6d1ca2630ff
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: jtsjr95
Component: WriterAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INSUFFICIENTDATA    
Severity: normal CC: xiscofauli
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.4.2.2 release   
Hardware: All   
OS: Windows (All)   
See Also: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133846
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:

Description jtsjr95 2020-06-08 14:06:21 UTC 
Description:
It crashes during the merge with the error "Access violation - no RTTI data!"

Steps to Reproduce:
I have spent probably 6 hours trying every different way there is to get this to work. I am tired and pissed. I having been using Libreoffice for many years and have never had a problem with mailmerge until now. I use mailmerge a lot.

Actual Results:
It crashes. That's all I am going to say because I am very tired.

Expected Results:
It should merge names and address into my letters.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
[Information automatically included from LibreOffice]
Locale: en-US
Module: TextDocument
[Information guessed from browser]
OS: Windows (All)
OS is 64bit: no
Comment 1 Xisco Faulí 2020-06-09 12:02:30 UTC 
Thank you for reporting the bug. To be certain the reported issue is not related to corruption in the user profile, could you please reset your Libreoffice profile ( https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile ) and re-test?

I have set the bug's status to 'NEEDINFO'. Please change it back to 'UNCONFIRMED' if the issue is still present
Comment 2 jtsjr95 2020-06-09 17:05:14 UTC 
I followed that link but did not see how to reset my UserProfile. But it does not matter now. I installed Java and it works now. I have used mailmerge on this computer previously and it worked but apparently you must have Java installed. So I understand how it could have ever worked. I don't recall how I realized Java needed to be installed but I downloaded and installed the wrong version (64 bit) and mailmerge still wouldn't work. So I installed the latest OpenOffice and it gave me an error informing me that Java was not installed and provided a link to the correct version. After installing the correct version (Program Files (x86)\jre1.8.0_251) mailmerge works in both OpenOffice and LibreOffice. I don't understand the inner workings of mailmerge and maybe this had nothing to do with the problem I was having.

I will say that I have been using libreoffice mailmerge for many years and it has always been difficult. For a long period of time it would let me use a spreadsheet as a data source. Then at some point spreadsheets would no longer work and I had to create a database. Then it seems I needed 32 bit Java. With regard to mailmerge, openoffice would not let me attempt a mailmerge until I had the proper version of java jre installed.

I appreciate all the work the libreoffice team does. I am a retired software engineer and I worked mostly on windows desktop applications. I know how difficult it is to keep everything working all the time. It's especially frustrating when the problems are caused by users not reading the instructions.
Comment 3 QA Administrators 2020-06-10 03:49:30 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 Timur 2020-06-10 07:33:42 UTC 
This report is all InsufficientData with no steps: did it crash on creating mail merge, was it wizard or data source, or with print...
I don't know if Java is used in Mail Merge, I see it working if turned off in Tools-Options.

Spreadsheet as a data source is a different issue. There may be some issues like Bug 124680 but it generally works. 
Please look into Help and if you have trouble, you may open a Documentation bug.