From the Tools menu in Word, select Options and then go to the General tab
and check the box against "Confirm conversions at open" After doing this,
when you attach the data source to the mail merge main document, you will
get a dialog asking for the method by which you want to make the connection.
Try the different options, probably the DDE option will be the one that you
need.

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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

"Lamar" wrote in message
...

I have a mailmerge doc (2003) which datasource is a parameter query. The
user is suppose to input their initials. When I open the doc I get a this
message "Dailog or dataengine failure". Can someone help?

If I remove the parameter from the query then I can open the doc with no
problem. But I need the parameter query. I could not find any post
addressing this particular issue.

Lamar