Which version of Word/Excel?

Has this worked before or is the first time you've tried to do this? If it
worked before, are you using Word 2000 and has an update been applied
recently?

As a workaround, you could try one of the other ways of connecting to Excel,
but they all have their differences and difficulties:
a. in Word 97/2000, check "Select method" in the Open Data Source dialog,
then see what options are offered (should be DDE, Converter, ODBC) and try
one of the non-DDE ones.
b. in Word 2002/2003, I would have to guess you are already choosing the
method, but if not, check Word Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversions at
open", then select your data source again and try one of the non-DDE options
offered (probably ODBC, OLEDB (the default) and maybe "Converter")

Peter Jamieson
"a_ryan1972" wrote in message
...
Hi, I have a main document set up that uses an excel spreadsheet as a data
file. When I try to open the main document it asks me to find the data
file.
When I click on the data file, I get a message saying Initializing DDE
Connection and then it just hangs. It opens a blank Excel workbook, but
nothing else.

Please help.

Thank you.