Word Add-In from Connect for Office and Standard Mail Merge End of Support

What changed?

To continue using the Word Add-In and/or Standard Mail Merge, users must upgrade to Connect for Office v1.8.1.6 by February 24, 2017, to meet the new standard certificate requirements and to ensure product authenticity.

It’s important to note that the timeline for the end of support of the Word Add-In and/or Standard Mail Merge from Connect for Office has not changed. Salesforce discontinued technical support, bug fixes, or enhancements for the Excel Add-In after March 4, 2017.

What happened after the End of Support date?

If you work with Connect for Office v1.8.1.5 and earlier after February 24, 2017, you no longer have the ability to create Microsoft Word document templates with Word Add-In from Connect for Office and generate mail merge documents with Standard Mail Merge no longer be supported.

After March 4, all support services for Word Add-In from Connect for Office and Standard Mail Merge will be unavailable. 

As such, this may result in the following, where Connect for Office is running on Microsoft Windows Vista: 

• Microsoft Word may fail to establish a login connection to Salesforce, and users may be unable to create mail merge templates in Microsoft Word for use with the mail merge utility in Salesforce  

• Salesforce may fail to generate a Microsoft Word mail merge document from any Salesforce record using a Microsoft Word mail merge template created manually or via Word Add-In from Connect for Office

What was the replacement, and what were the key differences between the legacy product and the replacement?

Word Add-In from Connect for Office:

You have two options:

1. Manual entry of merge Salesforce fields in Microsoft Word templates – Instead of using the Salesforce object drag-and-drop functionality from Word Add-In from Connect for Office, you can manually type the Salesforce object field name in the Microsoft Word template. See the Create Mail Merge Templates Help Topic.
   
   NOTE: Existing Microsoft Word templates that had been created with Word Add-In from Connect for Office can still be used with Extended Mail Merge after the End of Support date. Changes to these templates will require a manual update.
    
2. Select a solution from the Salesforce AppExchange – Identify an alternative solution from the Salesforce AppExchange by searching for the following keywords: template, generation, and mail merge. NOTE: Additional purchase may be required.

Standard Mail Merge:

You are encouraged to transition to Extended Mail Merge, which provides the following differences and benefits over Standard Mail Merge:

• Completed mail merge documents will be either emailed to the user or made available from the Docs object, depending on the admin preference selected. Previously, with Standard Mail Merge, the completed merge Microsoft Word document was generated locally in Microsoft Word.
• Extended Mail Merge has the ability to merge multiple records
• Extended Mail Merge supports Apple Mac OS X users
• Extended Mail Merge is processed on the server-side (no ActiveX installation required) and doesn't require using a Windows OS system with Microsoft Office installed locally.

See the Extended Mail Merge Features article for more details. 

NOTE: You must open a case with Support to be able to switch to Extended Mail Merge in your Salesforce org. Once the feature is enabled, you can activate Extended Mail Merge from Setup | Customize | User Interface: "Activate Extended Mail Merge" and check the box. 

How did I identify which users use Word Add-In from Connect for Office?

Salesforce admins can access the Login History page in Setup, export results, and filter them by Application.

Why have we retired these products?

Word Add-In from Connect for Office and Standard Mail Merge are only supported on Microsoft Windows Vista, which can't be configured to support TLS 1.1 or higher. As such, the disablement of TLS 1.0 by Salesforce drove us to the decision to end support for Word Add-In and/or Standard Mail Merge from Connect for Office functionality.

Where can I get more information?

Join the discussion in the Productivity Success Community group. 

If you have more questions, open a case with support via Salesforce Help or contact your Salesforce account team. To view all current and past retirements, see Salesforce Product & Feature Retirements.

For more information about Salesforce’s approach to retiring products and features, read our Product & Feature Retirement Philosophy.