Recently, a flood of calls have come into our technical support lines regarding a error that appears when a user tries to execute a mail merge. The error reads MS Word Converter. This is a problem with Word and can be fixed as follows:

You may experience mail merge issues write files are parsed but no message is shown.

To resolve this issue, an affected user can unregister the mswrd632 converter by editing the registry as follows:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Text Converters\Import\MSWord6.wpc
On the Edit menu, click Delete.
Click Yes.
Exit Registry Editor.

Reboot your computer and the merge function in REA should work.

By Michael Linenberger
Have you ever experienced “in-box stress”—you know, that sinking feeling you have when you glance at your overwhelmed in‑box? When weeks or even months of unread e-mail and incomplete actions have built up in your in-box, it can be a very scary place. Well, there’s good news—in-box stress can be cured.

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A 2008 survey at Intel showed employees receive 350 emails per week on average; at Morgan Stanley, employees get 625 new messages per week. Executives’ incoming email volume was much higher. In some cases, workers spent 20 hours a week just dealing with email.

Getting through all those messages every day isn’t easy. Certain kinds of email are harder to deal with than others–the ones that require you to check your calendar or look up more information, type a lengthy explanation, or make a tough decision. It’s easier to procrastinate and leave those messages in your inbox when they mean work you weren’t planning to do right away. But new messages just keep piling onto old ones like a game of Tetris you’re about to lose.

Start using your email inbox like your postal box: empty it, every single time you check it. It’s not that hard to do. If you get into the habit, you’ll feel on top of your game like never before.

The key is to train yourself to make an on-the-spot decision about what you need to do with an email message–and put it in a place where you know you’ll get to it on time. You don’t need a complicated filing system. There are only three kinds of email messages: stuff you need to do, stuff you’re waiting on, and stuff you might want to refer to later. Make three folders in your email program: To-do, Reference, and Wait.
email inbox

When you read an email, if it just needs a quick response, reply on the spot. If it’s trash, delete it. Everything else will go into one of your three folders.

If the message is a task you’ve got to complete–like a request from the boss–file it into your To-do folder, and add it to your to-do list. If the message is about something you’re waiting for–like a package shipment notification or a promise from a co-worker to get you something by next Tuesday–put it in your Wait folder, and maybe even on your calendar. Everything else–the CC’s, the FYI’s, the “just thought you should know”s–file these in Reference. That’s your library of email that you can search any time to look up information you might need later.

The hardest part about trying an empty email inbox is starting with thousands of messages. Do yourself a favor: Select all the email in your inbox that’s more than three days old, and move it into a ”OLDINBOX:  folder. Process whatever’s left using your new three-folder system. When you have time you can work your way through the old messages–but don’t worry, there will always be new email to deal with.

Even though the overall number of U.S. jobs continued to disappear through December of last year, the U.S. office market unexpectedly posted positive net absorption for the quarter. The most likely explanation is that jobs in the office sector increased. According to federal government jobs data, office sector employment increased for the fourth consecutive month in December, increasing by 48,000 jobs. Even the financial sector posted its first increase in employment since…  

http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=87FBFECDECD7B0332B74B1B040A5E506&ref=100&iid=166&cid=F5ADDE7A2CB69F86A1B38F8B705C2EDB

The outlooks for the New Year have begun coming in and a review of year-end forecasts for 2010 show that many commercial real… » Click here for full story

Hope and fear are overlapping in the commercial real estate industry on this eve of a new decade. The industry doesn’t know whether to look out for it or look forward to it. On the one hand, the industry is grateful that 2009 is coming at long last to an end. It was by many accounts the worst year in its history as values and incomes shrunk at precipitous rates. Whether that comment can be backed up by statistics is debatable, but few would argue that the hurt was deep and…  
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There is no better time than the present to work on your marketing plan for the upcoming year. I recently found a couple of resources I’d like to share with you.
First, I found a simple, straight-forward Marketing Calendar Template in Excel format on the Brandeo website – http://brandeo.com/2010-marketing-calendar-template-free-download. It includes all the primary marketing activities a small business might engage in along the left column. Across the top are the 12 months of the year broken down into weeks for planning purposes. They have also included a sample month to show you how they intend it to be used. This calendar is made available under a Creative Commons License.
I also found an article on the Entrepreneur website about creating a marketing calendar – http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/guerillamarketing/article193446.html. The instructions provided in this article fit perfectly with the template made available from Brandeo and I think it is a little easier to just mark each activity with an X since you may not know today exactly what you plan to do.
By having each activity marked, you will know, when the time comes, that you need to act in order to have a consistent marketing program in place. More than anything this will keep you focused on doing regular marketing activities throughout the year instead of waiting for a slump in sales and then trying to figure out what to do to make the phone ring.

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Marketing your brokerage business is an important factor for keeping top of mind in your target market. One of our REA 9 customers added us to their email list and if you want to see an excellent example of how to do an e-letter correctly, check this link:

http://www.pgofficespace.com/pdf/newsletters/PGCommercial_oct09-ITRA-Newsletter.pdf

Eighty years ago this fall the stock market crashed, which was followed by the Great Depression. That catastrophe, coming on the heels of World War I, destroyed the faith countless numbers of people had in democratic politics and traditional free markets. The Depression itself was portrayed as proof positive that markets are inherently unstable and that government plays a crucial and necessary role in preventing them from flying off the tracks. The same refrain is being heard again today as the economy begins a halting recovery from the disastrous financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007.

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