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Peter Jamieson Peter Jamieson is offline
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Default Why can't I have my excel file and mailmerge document open togethe

You will (almost) certainly see this, or a very similar problem, if for
example you are in the middle of a cell edit in the open Excel file,
e.g. if you have double-clicked in a cell or the insertion point is in
the formula bar at the top of Excel. There may be other operations in
Excel that will result in the problem.

I guess that in this case, when Word tries to access the Excel file, the
OLE DB provider considers that the file is "locked".

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

browniebodrum wrote:
I've been producing a directory using Word and a named range in an Excel
worksheet for many years without any real problems. Now I've upgraded to
Office2007, it seems I can't open my mailmerge 'master document' in Word
unless I first close the file where the data exists in Excel. If both
programs are open at the same time, Word produces an error to say that the
database engine can't find the (named range) object. Then, when I've
completed the merge, I have to close Word, otherwise when I try and open the
file in Excel again, I get an error message to say the file format or
extension is not valid. It's a pain keep having to close one or the other
down and I'm pretty sure I didn't have to do so in earlier versions of
Office. Am I missing something?