Thank you again, Doug,
bvut the problem is that I have to manage the documents in ana
application, not me manually. That is, I have to instruct my
application (which now creates the single, merged documents, by merging
the record values of the Excel file into the merge fields of the Word
documents), I have to instruct my application in order to have it
AUTOMATICALLY "know" which Word merge field corresponds to which Excel
header.
Thus, I really cannot edit the files by hand (my work would change,
from computer programmer to Excel document editor, LOL).
I ahve to know the general rule that tells me "when you have an Excel
header field with spaces and dots, then its is replaced, in the
corresponding Word document merge field, with a string made of.....
etc".
I'm sure that Microsoft people know exactly this rule, because they
wrote the programs (i.e. Word and Excel) which do this mapping
automatically.

Thank you for your help (and any further help)
Alessio