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What is the best format to use when creating a mailing list for use in Word 2007?

I am writing a web application (Java) that allows users to select contacts. Contact details can be downloaded (currently in CSV format) and used for mail merge in Word 2007.

I would like to use a format that is slightly more "robust" than CSV. Those of you who are not in English will know the comma and semicolon problems!

What format would you use?

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I prefer TSV (Tab Separated Values) for this kind of task. I have never come across a dataset containing literal tabs that was desired in the output.



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Without much experience in "non-english" mail merge, what happened to exporting contacts in xlsx format and using that as a data source?



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Depending on the reasons your user is doing the mail merge, you might want to move all the work to the server. When the user selects contacts and clicks OK, have the server merge mail and create a document for the user and send it to them. Docmosis or JODReports can provide this capability. You can also let the user choose different templates, or if you're really generous, let users upload their own.

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