We have a mail merge with 500 clients in SalesCQ. It takes between 45-75 seconds to create each email, the Word template file is 165k. We have created a completely blank template with the same results. We are using Windows XP with Outlook Express as our local email client. Email is hosted. Same result with no anti-virus installed on the workstation. When emailing from A/R or O/E emails work almost instantaniously.

When we merge the 500 customers to a Word letter, the application completes within a few minutes for all the customers.

We have been struggling with this issue for over a month now.

We have had network specialists in, in order to check out the general speed an efficiency of the network, and the system appears to be set properly.

What is frustrating is that when we conduct the same emailing merge on my XP laptop with the same data, SalesCQ processes the records at least one per second. On the clients system, the records are processed at a painful 40+ seconds each.

(Note that I am running Outlook 2007, while Lester is running Express. Is this signifcant?)

Any suggestions?

Samuel

Is Word getting launched for each letter? If so, then make sure word.exe is installed locally and not being virus scanned. And how much memory is installed on the machine doing the mail merge? I'd want lots.

Microsoft Office 2003 is installed locally and winword.exe does not open when SalesCQ creates a new message. Outlook Express is the email client. The PC has 4GB of RAM. The email mail merge takes just as long if Word is closed or opened ahead of time. Office is not installed on the server. We also confirmed the Email Setup settings were correct. There is over 100GB of free hard drive space. Anti-virus is still uninstalled.

Where is it spending it's time?

Running ‘Task Manager’ on the desktop and on the server, nothing sticks out as using lots of processor time and/or memory resources.

When running an email mail merge is there a way to have the .dot template become the body of the message, instead of a .doc attachment?

Actually, I was asking about what stage of the process was taking the time. There are several steps in preparing and emailing a mail merge. By determining which of the steps was taking the time compared to the fast performance on the laptop, you would be in a better position to see where the problem might lie.

It says "Generating 1 of 500." It takes the same amount of time if we sent it to queue or if we send it now.

Do you have a machine with Outlook installed? That's one of the differences that have been highlighted.

From my own searches, regarding 'Slow Word Mail Merges', you may want to check for an update to your Word or Office suite. Have you installed Service Pack 3? The number of merge fields could also play a role. How many are you using? Try a couple and see if that makes a difference.