I recently changed from XP to 2003 and now all my mail merge documents are a
problem.

I have tried the switches with limited success and changing 200 Merged
fields in one document one by one it turning out to be quite the challenge.
I still can not get the document to print the two decimal places required for
currency. Zip codes are a challenge. Our item list is a varried list of
Alpha, numeric, - and /. I have had limited success with some of the other
switch entries.

Does anyone else feel that Microsoft has taken a simple easy to use feature
and made it so complicated that you have to be a software engineer to use
this featue?

The simplest way to revert to previous behaviour is generally to check
Word|Tools|Options|General|Confirm conversion at Open, re-connect to your
Excel data source and choose the DDE option when offered. I suspect you must
have been using that in Word XP as you would probably be having the same
problems.

Does anyone else feel that Microsoft has taken a simple easy to use
feature
and made it so complicated that you have to be a software engineer to use
this featue?

I certainly thing some changes to the relevant OLEDB providers would have
avoided a lot of these problems.

Peter Jamieson

"Kelly" wrote in message
...
I recently changed from XP to 2003 and now all my mail merge documents are
a
problem.

I have tried the switches with limited success and changing 200 Merged
fields in one document one by one it turning out to be quite the
challenge.
I still can not get the document to print the two decimal places required
for
currency. Zip codes are a challenge. Our item list is a varried list of
Alpha, numeric, - and /. I have had limited success with some of the
other
switch entries.

Does anyone else feel that Microsoft has taken a simple easy to use
feature
and made it so complicated that you have to be a software engineer to use
this featue?