Thanks for reply. I understand your thought process, could you please give
me more detail on how (the key strokes) you were thinking of to "put the
following field { dde excel system sysitems }" and "execute it".

Thank you

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

I doubt if I can help but can you please try the following?
a. start Word
b. start Excel
c. in a blank Word document, put the following field:

{ dde excel system sysitems }

d. select the field and execute it. Use Alt-F9 to show the result - if the
field executes correctly, you should see something like

SysItems Topics Status Formats Selection
Protocols EditEnvItems


I am interested to see whether /any/ DDE connection is being made.

If that works, try

{ dde excel system topics }

You should see

[Book1]Sheet1 [Book1]Sheet2 [Book1]Sheet3
System



If that works, try opening your Excel document, and re-execute the { dde
excel system topics } field. You should see the names of some sheets in your
workbook, e.g.



[Book1.xls]Sheet1



then try



{ dde excel [Book1.xls]Sheet1 R1C1 }



using the name from the previous step instead of [Book1.xls]Sheet1


Peter Jamieson