[Erika]

When I open a mail merge I get the usual dialog box opening document will run
the following SQL command - however I get it twice

first time it says
SELECT *From 3358B778
this number changes every time

second time is says
SELECT *From mrgdoc
which I expect because this is my datasource

What is the first message, what does the number represent and why does it
change everytime. I should state that I am currently working in Office 2007
however I am saving to a Word 97-2003 format in order to share with others.

[Peter Jamieson]

I would guess that your data source is on a network drive - in that
case, Word does not actually open the file "in situ", but makes a temp
copy on a local drive. I don't know which particular mechanism Word uses
to do that, but it's fairly typical for operating systems such as
windows to have a system function that can generate temp file names
which won't clash with other file names, and usually they will generate
a different name every time.

Word then tries to fool you that it is dealing with the original file,
which it seems to do reasonably successfully unless you try editing the
data source using Word's Edit Recipients function - if you do that,
you'll probably receive error messages that also have to do with temp
files when you try to close your mailmerge file.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Erika wrote:
When I open a mail merge I get the usual dialog box opening document will run
the following SQL command - however I get it twice

first time it says
SELECT *From 3358B778
this number changes every time

second time is says
SELECT *From mrgdoc
which I expect because this is my datasource

What is the first message, what does the number represent and why does it
change everytime. I should state that I am currently working in Office 2007
however I am saving to a Word 97-2003 format in order to share with others.