[Kathleen V]

I looked on the help yesterday while doing mailmerge for changing the format
of numbers and found a response guiding me to DDE. All went well the first
time, but as we are still improving the files and testing them....all went
wrong from then onwards.

Now i cannot even link the main word document with the excel database
anymore. it keeps asking me to re-establish the connection. when i click all
the boxes it always gives me either 'could not decrypt' or 'could not
re-establish'. the help in both cases is not very helpful.

HELP!

tx kathleen

[Peter Jamieson]

Whicih version of Office?

Have you protected your Excel sheet(s) with passwords, e.g. in Excel
Tools|Options|Security? If so, do you see the password dialog box that Excel
presents when you try to connect to the sheet? If not, it's because the box
is hidden behind the Word document. Eventually Word will complain that it's
taking too long to connect.

If you haven't password-protected the Excel workbooks then the chances are
they have been corrupted in some way. If they are sufficiently simple (just
values, no formulas, then you can export a sheet to .csv format using Excel
File|Save As, then open the .csv and re-save as a .xls and try again.

Peter Jamieson




"Kathleen V" wrote in message
...
I looked on the help yesterday while doing mailmerge for changing the
format
of numbers and found a response guiding me to DDE. All went well the first
time, but as we are still improving the files and testing them....all went
wrong from then onwards.

Now i cannot even link the main word document with the excel database
anymore. it keeps asking me to re-establish the connection. when i click
all
the boxes it always gives me either 'could not decrypt' or 'could not
re-establish'. the help in both cases is not very helpful.

HELP!

tx kathleen