[Peter Jamieson]

You can try the following:
a. before you merge, in Excel select the entire sheet except for the first
row and use Insert|Name|Define to create a range name (Let's sau "mydata"
b. In Word, go through the process of connecting to the spreadsheet, and
(if you are using Word 2002/2003) "mydata" should be presented as one of the
possible "tables".

Peter Jamieson
"bronxbabe" wrote in message
...
i'm trying to do a mail merge using excel data. my problem is that my
first
row (in excel) has data in it that cannot be deleted, but it is NOT my
header/label row. the second row has the labels (last name, first name,
etc...) but, i need the first row because it has a date, which is used in
the formulas to calculate ages, lengths of employments, etc... If i
delete
this first row, most formulas revert to "REF" marks. If I run the merge
as
is, when the table is displayed, it is labelled as F1, F2, F3,... and
there
are more than 500 columns altogether. (I have unchecked the option:
"First
row of data contains column headers" in the Select Table dialogue, but
same
results.) Any suggestions,

p.s. copying the table into word to generate merge a lot of work since
there were multiple tabs being used.

Thanks in advance,