Hi Andrew,

Try saving the excel file as a .csv file (text) and then use that as the
datasource.

I don't know anything about the Mac OS or Word for it, but about 64 fields
used to be the limit in earlier versions of Word for Windows, but more
recent versions of Office have increased that to 256 fields which is the
maximum number of columns available in Excel (or fields available in an
Access database table).

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Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Andrew" wrote in message
oups.com...
I am running Macintosh OS 10.2 and using word and excel for OSX. I want
to do a merge with an excel worksheet as my data source. It will only
let meuse 63 different data fields. How can I fix it so it will see
more. I
know this is possible and it has something to do with the merge helper
getting involved and coverting my excel file. When the merge file
accesses the excel file,it says that it is converting the file. I tried
checking the "confirm conversion before opening" preference, but this
has not helped. How can I stop word from converting my excel file?

(I have crossposted on microsoft.public.mac.word but not received a
response)

Thanks!

Andrew