The old DDE communications method hasn't been reliable for quite some time
now (not that any of the other methods are ideal). In this case, it may be
worth checking to see whether older Spreadsheets work fine (in which case
something has probably changed at the "other person's" end). If not, the
problem might be
a. the result of a Windows or Office update applied recently on your system
b. that you are using another application that relies on DDE and which is
hanging for some reason

If it's (b) you'll probably know about it as it would suggest you are using
something you hadn't used much before.

If it's (a), there are a couple of potentially relevant Microsoft KB
articles concerning DDE (have a look at http://support.microsoft.com - I can
probably be more specific if you can't find anything that looks relevant)

In any case, you could always try connecting to the Excel sheet using ODBC
or the Excel converter (check "Select method" in the Open Data Source dialog
box, and select the ODBC or converter option). However, there are
significant differences in the way that the DDE/ODBC/Converter methods
behave, and in particular you may need to start using numeric and date/time
"switches" in your Word MERGEFIELD fields to get similar results to the ones
you're used to.

Peter Jamieson

"ANorth" wrote in message
...
I use Word 2000 for mail merge frequently. Lately when trying to merge a
spreadsheet from Excel into a form letter it just runs and runs and won't
finish "initiating the DDE link". I receive the Excel spreadsheets, via
email attachment, from another person who may be using Office 2003. My
operating system is XP.