From the Tools menu, select Options and then go to the General tab and check
the box for the "Confirm conversions at open" item.

After doing that, when you attach the data source to the mail merge main
document, you will be asked to select the method by which the connection
should be made. If you use the DDE option, the previous result will
probably be obtained.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

"antonista" wrote in message
...
I have created a word 2003 doc using mail merge, and It used to open the
excel database file every time i would open the file. Somewhere along the
line, it stopped doing this.

Also, in other versions of the file, it stopped automatically linking the
database, and I need to go and open the data source.

Does anybody know how to reestablish the SQL command that will open the
excel file and link it to the word doc?

thanks.