[sylmelnik]

when saving a mail merge document it saves with an access key beside the
file. why does this happen. will this make a difference to the mail merge,
as quite a few times the merged information was not there.

[Peter Jamieson]

why does this happen.

1. Word 2002/2003 always save data sources as .mdb files.
2. The .mdb file format is, if you like, the original "native" format used
by Access
3. Windows tries to recognise what program a file "belongs to" by looking at
the file extension. It knows that ".mdb" files are normally Access files and
that's why things such as Windows Explorer displays an Access icon with .mdb
files.

The .mdb files that Word creates have one tle with a predetermined name,
and one query with a similar name. This structure is called an "Office
Address List" in Word (and perhaps elsewhere). Despite the fact that these
are Access format flest is a mistake to open these .mdb files directly with
Access, because Access then makes modifications to the file that mean that
they are

You don't have to do things this way. There are all sorts of file types you
can use as a data source - for example, you can use a table in a Word
document, where the first row of the table contains the field names. By
default, Word's Mail Merge Wizard won't let you /create/ one of those, but
you don't have to work with the wizard.

will this make a difference to the mail merge,
as quite a few times the merged information was not there.

Can you spell out what you mean? Are you saying that you entered merge
information but then you couldn't find it in the data source? Or what?

Peter Jamieson

"sylmelnik" wrote in message
...
when saving a mail merge document it saves with an access key beside the
file. why does this happen. will this make a difference to the mail
merge,
as quite a few times the merged information was not there.