Just a guess really: have a look at the properties of your copy of ddeml.dll
(the DDE Management Library). On my machine (Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
2005 Version 2002 SP2, which is probably identical to Win XP SP2 in this
respect) the file version is 3.50.0.103, creation date 31 March 2003 02:00.

If yours is significantly different from that, it might be worth backing up
your original and copying the version appropriate to your version of Windows
XP from elsewhere. I wasn't able to find any registry entries associated
either with ddeml.dll or dde as a whole, except of course the many ddeexec
entries used by the Windows shell.

Peter Jamieson

wrote in message
oups.com...
OS: WinXP Home
Access 2000
Word 2000


I loaded 1998 vintage 16-bit business mapping software onto a PC and I
think it overlayed some OS files dealing with DDE functionality. After
that software install, my DDE functionality between Microsoft Word 2000
and Access 2000 and Excel 2000 has been affected.

Now, when I try to open a Word document that was formerly successfully
linked to an Access table, the Word document just hangs forever as the
DDE link attempts to initialize. I can still create and link new
documents to Access using ODBC, but it's not my solution of choice
because I have so many Word documents already linked to Access tables
via DDE.

Ideally, I'd like to find a way to restore DDE functionality as it was,
before that old software was installed (I've since removed the
offending software). I don't prefer to do an OS overlay/reload. I don't
even know if that would help anyway.

Is there a way to restore just the DDE functionality in the OS by
(maybe?) copying files from another XP Home machine, or editing the
registry?

Please excuse the fact that my request for ideas/help is not
*perfectly* aligned with the specific focus of this newsgroup, but this
newsgroup has been a big help to me in many ways relating to Word merge
issues. I'm hopeful someone might have some experience with DDE failure
and solutions.
Any helpful advice is much appreciated!


Thanks,


Bob