Error 52 Bad file name or number performing Mail Merge in CRM with Microsoft Word

Error 52 Bad file name or number performing Mail Merge in CRM with Microsoft Word

Have you ever googled or bing’ed an error and notice that everyone is missing the boat? Well, that happened recently while doing a mail merge of CRM Contacts with Microsoft Word.

Here’s the setup:
Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Internet Facing Deployment with a view that was setup to e-mail newsletters
Using Microsoft Internet Explorer v 8.0
Using Microsoft Word 2010

The process:
Selected the records/view to mail merge to
Clicked on the mail merge button
Microsoft Word opened and when I went to step through the Wizard, it gave me the error: Error 52 Bad file name or number

The Rabbit Hole:
Upon searching for a solution, I kept finding articles about how it worked before but now it doesn’t. Further, I found solutions that led a person to believe it was an authentication issue.

The REAL Solution:
It was very simple. It struck me that on my Windows 7 64 bit OS and IE v8.0 64 bit, that this might very well be the issue.
I launched IE v8.0 32 bit, performed the same steps and the process worked.
My presumption is that since the Mail Merge puts a text file out there for the Word doc to use, there was some confusion between the 32 and 64 bit filepath.

Hope this helps!