I must admit I've never worked that way - I can have a look at how it worked
in the version of Word she was using before if you can tell me what version
that was. However, I suspect that in Word 2003 a data document will be
needed, and it's really a question of how to make that behave in as
congenial way as possible.

Peter Jamieson

"Carla Bradley" wrote in message
...
I tried to talk her into have a source document, but she refuses. She types
each person in on the fly using the data form button. So for example if
she
has to send the letter to two people, she opens the letter and clicks the
data form button and enters the two. She uses view source for spell check
(which now does nothing when you click it) and merges the document.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

If the data source is a table in a Word document, it is still possible to
use the Edit button in Edit|Recipients, and it is still possible to open
the
data source document and use all Word's spellchecking facilities. The
main
drawback is that Word 2003 opens Word data sources much more slowly than
Word 2000 (probably not a problem for small data sources but definitely a
problem for large ones).

Not sure whether that is enough for a workable system but I'm not sure
how
else she will get both editability and spellchecking.

Peter Jamieson

"Carla Bradley" wrote in message
...
I had incorrect information. She had this to say.

The Data Form does come up and I am able to input the information. What
doesn't work is the View Source button on the Data Form. Before I
could
hit
View Source and it would show what I had typed in the Data Form. Now
it
just
disappears. The question that needs to be asked is how to make the
View
Source work on the Data Form. The importance of being able to use View
Source is that I can spellcheck there. Bottom line is that I need
somewhere
to spellcheck my inputted information. If we can find out either how
to
make
View Source work or find an alternate way to spellcheck the inputted
information, that is what I need.


"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

When you use the data form you /are/ using source data. If she
previously
used an earlier version of Word, I would guess that she, or someone,
had
created a Word document, set it up as a mail merge main document with
a
specific data source (probably another Word document if it was in Word
2000
or 97) and saved it. Then all she would have to do to use it would be
to
open the document and go into the edit function.

In Word 2003 you can probably do something very similar. However,
a. if you create a data source using the mail merge wizard in Word
2003,
Word creates a special form of single-table Jet (Access) .mdb called
an
Office Address List
b. you would need to find the Edit Mail Merge List command and put it
on
a
toolbar - you can find it by opening Tools|Customize, selecting
category
All
Commands, and looking in the alphabetic list on the right.

I hope that gives you some clues, anyway.


Peter Jamieson

"Carla Bradley" wrote in
message
...
I have a client that uses mail merge, but she doesn't use source
data.
She
uses the data form button to create entries. She has Word 2003. Now
when
she
clicks the data form button nothing happens. I was able to get her
to
that
menu by using the mail merge wizard, but she won't do that. Wants to
just
open the document and click the data form button and enter her data.
Any
ideas why it may not be working?