[Brenda from Michigan]

Word and Excel 2002 SP3

Excel document has formatting, dates, currency, SSN, etc. to merge into
Word, so we need to use DDE to retain those formats. Until recently, merges
worked fine. User thinks a co-worker €œdid something to my machine.€� When
she merges with some, not all, of her letters, she gets the dreaded €œWord
could not re-establish a DDE connection to Microsoft Excel to complete the
current task.€�

- In Excel, Ignore Other Applications is unchecked.
- Confirm Conversion at Open is checked.
- The Excel file is 670KB.
- To copy just data to a new spreadsheet would cause a lot of formatting to
need re-creation, so I have copied (Select All) the spreadsheet to a new
workbook.
- I inserted the letter into a new document.
- I renamed normal.dot.

In one case the letter inserted into a new document worked, but this method
did not work using another of her letters.

I have no idea why all the letters worked fine up until last Friday. Short
of reinstalling the suite, which I doubt would work anyway, what else is
there to try? Im stumped!