Hi Ohmes,

The only issue is that the excel file is a shared file and it seems as
though using ODBC prevents others from accessing the Excel file!

You could try using Word's spreadsheet converter, instead. Since that
makes a copy of the file, in memory, I'd think the original file would
be released...

DDE allows this.

I have heard of others having the same problem. Wonder if Microsoft
have got a solution to the DDE problem.

The DDE problem most people have is that Word "cannot re-establish the
connection". And it's usually not intermittant, but constant. Yours is
something else...

About Microsoft doing something about it: I doubt it. DDE is old
technology and works less and less reliably on each newer version of
Windows. But, hey, one can tell them :-) On the microsoft.com site
there's a portal to the newsgroups (requires you to "log on" using
Passport). There you can post a SUGGESTION that they should put more
support into making sure DDE as a connection method for mail merge works
more reliably. I'm sure you'd get a number of votes supporting it :-)

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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