[Peter Jamieson]

From your description it is difficult to make sense of what is happening -
it would help if you could say a bit more about what your software actually
does.

A Word document can either have
a. a Mail merge document type set up (or "Normal Word Document")
b. a mail merge data source set up (in which case, there will be a mail
merge document type that is /not/ "Normal Word Document"

The user can easily set up (a) using the Mail Merge Helper in Word 2000, or
the Wizard/Toolbar in 2003.

If the user tries to set up (b) in either program (manually or
programmatically) without first setting up (a), then Word will default to
Form Letters.

Once (b) has been set up, the only simple way for the user to get rid of the
data source manually or programmatically is to set the Mail Merge Main
document type to Normal Word Document, in which case no information is
retained about the mail merge document type. (Actualoly if you try to do
this in Word 2003 using the old MailMergeHelper, you seem to end up with a
mail merge main document type that displays as blank but is in fact "Email".
Also, in Word 2003 you can programmatically close the Data Source using the
Close method of the DataSource object/property, leaving the mail merge main
document type intact).

So I would say that there is little difference in behaviour - unless the
user has gone to the trouble of specifying a mail merge main document type
or the document already has a data source attached, a piece of software
cannot tell what the main document type is supposed to be.

What I suspect is happening is that
a. your software simply takes existing mail merge documents with all their
document type and data source info. intact, and merges them
b. in Word 2003 the user has found that having an existing data source gets
in the way, and has removed it. If they do it in the usual way, that would
also remove the mail merge main document type information. But your program
would not just have to restore the type information - it would also have to
restore the data source. (which is why I can't quite see what you're
actually doing)

I think you may have to insist that your user at least sets up the mail
merge main document type for you (it can be done very easily using the mail
merge toolbar, for example)

Peter Jamieson
"Chris" wrote in message
...
Any help/info will be of GREAT use

We have a system programatically linking to Word to create mailmerge
documents. this has always worked fine up to and including 2003. One of
our
customers has recently upgraded to Word 2003 and experienced problems with
a
directory mail merge document .

Upon investigation I have discovered that when a mail merge master
document
has it's datasource attached Word cannot understand what kind of document
it
is and defaults to Form Letters. With it's datasource detached then Word
reads the document correctly

Has anybody else experienced this and have a solution for the problem

Detaching the datasource from all documents is a workaround but messy
Programmatically setting the document type in code (which does work) is
alos not an option since the code handles both Form Letters and
Directories
and does not distinguish between them

again any help gratefully recieved