You might have to get a bit brutal and open the mailmerge main document in
Word 2003 and convert it back into an ordinary Word document, then save it
and then open that version of the document back 97 and reattach the
datasource

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Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Matt Thorley" Matt wrote in message
...
I have a user that has created a mail merge document using an excel
spreadsheet as the data source. Until recently he has been using the
document
with no problems, unfortunately when he now opens the document it causes a
number of issues.

Firstly when the user loads the mail merge document in word 97 it takes a
long time to bring up an error message stating "word is taking a long time
to
open this document, do you wish to continue waiting? Yes / No"
Either choice gives no response and the user is left with the egg timer on
screen. It is not possible to switch between word and excel and both
programs
have to be closed by ending the task. Its also noted that when bringing up
task manager it states that excel is not responding.

Also until I reinstalled excel onto the users machine it was noted that
excel was unable to load fully after end task was performed, and after a
full
system restart. Excel would simply wait with the egg timer when loading
and
hang.

On the odd occassion I have managed to open the mail merge document but it
is not possible to switch between word and excel, excel just stays
minimized
and is seen in the taskbar.

I have though been able to open the mail merge document on a different
workstation with office 2003 with no errors. I have yet had chance to try
the
mail merge on a similar machine to the one which the user is having errors
with.

The user is running office 97 pro sr2b full installation on windows 98se
accessing a mail merge document via a mapped network drive. The network
client is novel netware 3.2 The workstation is roughly 3 years old and is
a
celeron 900 with 256mb of sdram. User has had no other problems with the
pc.
Also note that i have copied the database from the network drive to the
local
machine to see if the issue was to do with the network but brings up the
same
issues.

Sorry for the long post but I was trying to put in as much information as
possible so that this could be troubleshooted easier.

Any help would be appreciated, it maybe the case of me rebuilding the
machine which to be honest i would prefer not to do.

Thanks again

Matt Thorley