Outlook--Customize the Subject in a Bulk Mailing

In a Microsoft Word merge to email message, how can I use merge fields—regardless of the data source—to build the Subject field of the merge?

Unfortunately, when you specify the subject for a merge to email in Word, that subject applies to all outgoing messages. You can't construct a subject for each message, such as a subject that's personalized for the recipient.

You might be better off automating the process with programming code. The Microsoft article "Using Microsoft Excel To Do a Bulk Mailing in Microsoft Outlook" (http://www.microsoft .com/exceldev/articles/bulkmail.htm) shows how to use Excel to automate a mass mailing and customize the text of the messages. You can adapt the code to customize the subject instead. You might want to keep a pre­Service Pack 2 (SP2) copy of Outlook 2000 around to run the code, though. Any later Outlook version has the Outlook Email Security Update, which displays a prompt for each message you send. You must wait a full 5 seconds before you can click Yes to allow Outlook to send the item.