I have an excel spread that I pass between work and home. I use it for a
datasource in mailmerge. At home I have MSOFFICE2003 PRO. At work I have
MSOFFICE2000 PRO. I took the spread and the Word mail merge document home on
my stick last night and made changes to both. I had no problems. This morning
at work, when I try to open the Excel spread from word mailmerge WORD 2000
PRO says "Word could not re-establish a DDE connection to Microsoft Excel to
complete the current task."

I have tried saving the excel spread and the word mail merge files in a
different folder and then reattempting to open the word mailmerge file --
with no luck.

Try opening the data source using a different method.
--
Richard


"rmoritzky" wrote:

I have an excel spread that I pass between work and home. I use it for a
datasource in mailmerge. At home I have MSOFFICE2003 PRO. At work I have
MSOFFICE2000 PRO. I took the spread and the Word mail merge document home on
my stick last night and made changes to both. I had no problems. This morning
at work, when I try to open the Excel spread from word mailmerge WORD 2000
PRO says "Word could not re-establish a DDE connection to Microsoft Excel to
complete the current task."

I have tried saving the excel spread and the word mail merge files in a
different folder and then reattempting to open the word mailmerge file --
with no luck.

In this case the simplest thing is usually to use the Open Data Source
button on the Mail Merge toolbar to reconnect to your source (which Word
somehow occasionally loses track of).

But see the KB article "You receive a 'Word could not re-establish a DDE
connection' error message in Word" at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=813989

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"rmoritzky" wrote in message
...
I have an excel spread that I pass between work and home. I use it for a
datasource in mailmerge. At home I have MSOFFICE2003 PRO. At work I have
MSOFFICE2000 PRO. I took the spread and the Word mail merge document home
on
my stick last night and made changes to both. I had no problems. This
morning
at work, when I try to open the Excel spread from word mailmerge WORD 2000
PRO says "Word could not re-establish a DDE connection to Microsoft Excel
to
complete the current task."

I have tried saving the excel spread and the word mail merge files in a
different folder and then reattempting to open the word mailmerge file --
with no luck.