Mail Merge

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Good Morning. Trying to perform a mail merge using a Word 2002 template and an excel spread sheet. I’m not using the wizard, but the Mail Merge tool bar. The second button from the left “Open a data source”, browse to the excel spread sheet, double click and get a message “unable to open data source.” I cannot understand why?
Excel spread sheet is not open at this point. It lives in “My Documents” on C. It is not protected in any way.
Any help out there?????
I do have “print area” defined.
Thanks.

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You might try the following:
– Select Tools | Options…
– Activate the General tab.
– Tick the check box “Confirm conversion at open”.
– Click OK.
– Now specify the Excel data source again.
– You’ll get a dialog with several options to open the data source.
– See if another choice than the one selected by default works.
– If not, the Excel worksheet may not be set up correctly.

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Hi Charlotte,

In Excel, go to Tools|Options|General and make sure ‘ignore other applications’ is NOT checked.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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There are several ways to merge Excel 2002 documents into Word documents, including ADO, conversion to Word, and DDE. I have had by far the best results with DDE. It may be old, but it works better than any of the others, and is blazing fast on Windows NT, 2000, and XP.

David A. Gray

Designing for the Ages, One Challenge at a Time

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There are several ways to merge Excel 2002 documents into Word documents, including ADO, conversion to Word, and DDE. I have had by far the best results with DDE. It may be old, but it works better than any of the others, and is blazing fast on Windows NT, 2000, and XP.

Hi David,

The question of which connection method is best depends on the situation. DDE is useful, but has its limitations, just as the other methods have their’s. Charlotte’s problem was with establishing a connection in the first place, as indicated by the message “unable to open data source.”

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi David,

The question of which connection method is best depends on the situation. DDE is useful, but has its limitations, just as the other methods have their’s. Charlotte’s problem was with establishing a connection in the first place, as indicated by the message “unable to open data source.”

I understand, and I’ve had that problem when I tried to open an Excel data source as an ODBC data source. I’ve had no such problems with DDE conversations.

David A. Gray

Designing for the Ages, One Challenge at a Time

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