# windows XP professional, Office 2003 and mail merge problems



## swandhams

When I try to open a mail merge document created in a previous version of Word in word 2003 the computer blue screen and shuts down. This has happened several times. The only way I can open the mail merge main document is to break the connection with the data source. If I then try to link to the data source again or even create a new mail merge document the same problem occurs. A colleague with the same computer has a similar problem but her computer just locks up and has to be re-started. Has anyone else had a similar problem and does anyone have any solutions? Is this a conflict between XP and Office 2003, any suggestions welcome!!


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## whodat

*welcome to tsf*
do you still have office 2000 installed on the computer with office 2003?


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## liliy

*Mail Merge in Win XP*

I am also facing problems when using Mail Merge created using older MS Word. Data from MS Excel which is set up to be Numbers with 2 decimal points are merged well in Word 2000, but when this is opened using Word 2002/3, the decimal points are more, and this happens only to some of the records. Is there any way to keep the formatting from MS Excel? Help appreciated :4-dontkno


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## jpr

I also have word merge documents that no longer work under Word 2003 / WinXP. The document contains a table that should be populated from a database using an odbc datasource connection to querry an Access mde file.

Under Word2003/WinXP word prompts the user to locate the data source repeatedly. The only way to get out of the repeated prompts is to end task word.

The only work around I could get to work was to change the merge connection so it goes directly to the mde file instead of using the odbc datasource. It works, but is not ideal since I can't be sure where the file will be on various customer machines (which is one reason why the odbc datasource connection was handy)

Looking around the net it sounds like other people are running into similar stuff but I have yet to see a MS Knowlege Base article that addresses it.


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## SENT[uk]

for the people with word 2000 documents and word 2003 not merging could you not just open the document in word 2003 and then save it as a word 2003 version ? or do you need it in the older format for older computers ?


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## jfmo

This is what I figured out for my merge issues. I was using a [Date 1] field that required the database to perform a search after you entered the date in the field. For some reason, installing Office Pro 2003 caused some kind of "disconnect" and the database will no longer perform these operations nor open the database for word docs using this operation. So I changed the [Date 1] field to Date() which automatically enters todays date. Now my merges work again. jfo


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