Can anyone help. We are running Word & Excel 97 on Windows XP. We have a database in Excel and use it for mail merge with Word files. This has always worked until today, when I am getting the message "word could not re-establish a DDE connection to Microsoft Excel to complete the current task". Example: I click to open the Word document, which launches Excel and normally would open the database. This happens as normal, the Excel file opens - it is password protected, so I enter the correct password and the document finishes opening - however I then get the error message and the Word document does not open. I am given the option to "find data source", so go to the relevant document with the same result, the alternative to "remove data/header source" or "remove all merge info". Obviously, I don't want to remove the merge info, so have tried removing the data/header source and going in through Tools/MailMerge/Get data - again, same result. I have tried saving the database with a new name - same result. I have tried saving the Word doc with a new name - same result. I have even tried copying and pasting the data from the Excel file into a new blank document and saving with a new name but again, no joy. I have rebooted several times, I have run a defrag and disk clean up and now I'm at a loss as to what to do. Any advice would be very much appreciated!! Thanks.

**** FURTHER COMMENT **** I am just wondering if there is a maximum size of excel doc that word will merge to? If I copy and paste a small section of the excel database to a new doc with a new name then to into word and create a new mail merge document, it can read the excel file but if I then copy the rest of the data into this new excel file and again try to create a new mail merge doc in word, I get the same error message. Any ideas?

There are several MSKB articles dealing with this error; 198299, 113705, 813989, to name just three. If those don't help, Google also generates many hits on that error. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

Thanks for the info, I have now got it so that word reads the data source using the convertor as in the MSKB articles. Only problem now, is that for some reason, it isn't pulling all of the fields in as possible merge fields. I've got entire workbook specified, so it's not a question of having put the wrong data range in but within word, when I go to the "insert merge field" tab, it is only listing about half of the fields that I have in the excel doc. Any ideas on this? Sorry if this seems like a stupid question but I'm not really very good with computers! I've tried google but obviously haven't come up with the right choice of search terms to give me a useful answer! Thanks