I have an MS-Word "Address List" file with a table having the typical
address fields.

A number of MS-Word mail-merge documents refer to the Address List file.
They're all in the same folder as the Address List.

From time to time, I rename or move or copy the folder. I'd like the mail-
merge documents to continue using the Address list in their folder, but
Word seems to use an absolute path name as the internal data-source
reference. So I end up having to manually change the data source of each
mail-merge document.

Is there a way to make the data source references relative, so they'll
track the folder renames and moves?

If that's not possible, is there a way to include an environment variable
in the reference? For example, I have a Windows file shortcut with a target
like this:
"C:\Documents and Settings\self\My Documents\%THISYEAR%"
where THISYEAR is an environment variable that gets changed each January 1.