mail merge does not work

[JohnPaton]

I have the Writer Guide for LO 6.0 and have followed the steps to produce a mail merged letter - pages 301 onwards.

I have successfully connected the spreadsheet address file to the document.

However dragging and dropping the field names to the letter simply copies the field names - ie not shaded nor enclosed in < >. If I print the document the system does not prompt me about database fields and the output is a single page with the field names printed.

A possibly related issue is that I do not seem to be able to insert fixed data ie company name and address, which was previously set up using Tools → Options → User Data. These fields do not seem to appear when I use Insert → Field → More Fields

[JohnPaton]

I think that I have solved this by accident. I will run some test and re-post here with the solution.

The solution was in fact extremely simple. The very first row - row 1 in the spreadsheet - must have the ‘field names’ in it. My spreadsheet had a title in the first row, then the field names below that. This causes the problem with mail merge. Even a blank row above the field names row gives the same problem. As long as the spreadsheet is set up properly mail merge works just fine.